Public-private partnerships tackle Kansas City trash and recyclables. We can do more | Opinion
English poet William Wordsworth may have been right that humans are born “trailing clouds of glory,” but almost immediately after our first breath, we begin producing piles of trash and other waste that trail behind us.
That’s why we need — and have — systems for burying, burning or recycling it. The question is whether those systems — often public-private partnerships — work well.
The good news is that, slowly, Kansas City officials are moving toward a comprehensive system to handle waste. Much of it, of course, isn’t waste at all — or wouldn’t be if it could be recycled or otherwise used in generative ways.
From the time City Hall took on the waste management task half-century ago using the earnings tax, there have been incremental improvements. Another will happen soon, when residents will receive new and more sensible recycling carts that, unlike the current plastic bins, have lids. Kansas Citians in nearly 162,000 homes will start getting them next month.
Those new carts will replace the current flawed system in which residents set out their recyclables in an open-top bin they’ve bought or in a cardboard box. One result of that — and the companion trash bag pickup system — is that what was meant to go into recycling trucks sometimes gets scattered around the neighborhood. The new system should help.
Even better, as Star reporter Natalie Wallington reported recently, most of what people want to recycle really does get recycled at one of two processing centers.
“By and large, recycling is happening as it should,”said Matt Riggs, an outreach coordinator with the Mid-America Regional Council’s solid waste division.”If you’re throwing a bunch of stuff in there that isn’t recyclable, yes, the non-recyclable stuff is getting landfilled. But the stuff that is recyclable is getting recycled.”
MARC, by the way, works with local governments to divert waste from landfills, offering grants, education and other tools. Area officials should take advantage of the organization’s know-how and resources.
As for things stuffed into bins that can’t be recycled, residents can help fix that by knowing, for instance, which plastics really get recycled and which don’t. They also can help by not putting what they want recycled into plastic bags. Workers at the recycling centers have to rip open those bags by hand and sort through the contents, and they often don’t have time to do that. So the contents head for a landfill.
Ripple Glass solved a problem
Some functions that citizens need — building and maintaining streets, for instance — must be done by government agencies at taxpayer expense. Some can be handled strictly by private firms or individuals — lawn care, for instance. But others are best accomplished through a public-private partnership. Waste management is in that category.
Once public employees empty Kansas Citians’ recycling bins, that material goes to one of two material recovery facilities, both operated by private companies.
As for glass recycling in this area, it has become mostly a private enterprise. For instance, in 2009, leaders of Boulevard Brewery, aware that tons of glass bottles were ending up in landfills, helped create the private company Ripple Glass. Since then, the business, now owned by a large Texas firm, says it “has more than quadrupled the rate of glass recycling in the Kansas City metropolitan area and partnered with more than 100 municipalities throughout the Midwest to collect and process glass.” Last year, Ripple says, it collected about 30 million pounds of glass in the area alone.
But before that, one ripple effect of this private business led to the 2013 creation of another private company known as the Glass Bandit, which now is Crush Glass KC. For a fee, it picks up bins of glass that homeowners don’t want to bother taking to one of the many purple Ripple recycling bins around the city.
So recycling is good for the economy, partly because private companies buy the waste materials to make new products, and partly because it creates jobs. As the Environmental Management System of the National Institutes of Health says: “Incinerating 10,000 tons of waste creates one job, while landfilling the same amount creates six jobs. Recycling the same 10,000 tons creates 36 jobs.”
Next, Kansas City should improve trash pickup and consider a system of compost waste disposal.
As The Star’s Kynala Phillips has reported, there is movement toward City Hall providing not just new recycling carts but also trash carts, though so far residents have no idea when they will see such carts. But unless they are available soon, it seems likely that the new recycling carts will frequently get filled with trash and bollix up the whole system.
As for composting, it’s already available from private companies such as Kansas City Composting, Compost Connection and Compost Collective KC. Each will pick up different kinds of waste for a fee. Should the city compete with such private companies? Not unless there are excellent reasons to do that — but it’s a discussion worth having.
Humans simply produce waste. All of us can work harder at making less so the beleaguered Earth won’t have to absorb so much of it. But even the most conscientious people need ways to dispose of waste and recycle products efficiently. Kansas City’s system is far from perfect, but it’s making progress.
