Alameda County also provides an online tool, called the Recycling Wizard at StopWaste.org, to answer residents’ questions and help them find where their trash, recyclables and hazardous waste need to go.
Bradley no longer hauls the recycling out in multiple bins – pre-sorting the metals, glass and plastics. Now, the city collects recycling in a co-mingled bin because it gathers enough recyclables that it can afford to pay the reclamation vendor to sort the goods. (Residents can put out all plastics, including Numbers 1-7, but they are coached to put out the “narrow neck bottles” that provide the best plastic for reclamation.)
Today, people in Alameda County also enjoy “wet” or “green” recycling where they can send out their organic food waste to be composted. The county’s education page
on organic food scrap recycling is a model consumer advisory on this latest endeavor. It also explains that food scrap recycling will be necessary to meet Alameda’s new aggressive goal of 75 percent diversion of waste from the landfill.
Residents have to keep just a few matters in mind. They have to know what constitutes the appropriate food scraps and they have to properly use three containers — a gray garbage can; a gray bin with a black top for recyclables and a green waste bin for the outgoing “green” material.
And so the recycling system chugs along — pushed by the state, the county, the city and mostly importantly, a corps of educated consumers.
“We’ve had it for a while,’’ says Bradley. “I grew up with it, and that’s how you do it.”
Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media
