Waste_Inbox

Chuck Wagon: The [newly online-only] Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports today that Seattle has made changes to its recycling program aimed at reducing the amount of food waste destined for landfills.

The city this week began allowing people to toss all types of leftovers -- fish and meat scraps, bones, egg shells, dairy products, you name it -- into their green food-and-yard-waste carts.

To stifle the stink and prevent varmints´ having a field day under this new arrangement, the city has also upped the frequency of organic waste pickups from every other week to weekly.

The Waiting: Here´s yet another interesting article about the financial bind recyclers are stuck in, this one from the Denver Post.

The economics of recycling have been way out of whack since the bottom fell out of the recyclable commodity market last fall, and no one seems to sense a light at the end of the tunnel, yet.

In the meantime, recyclers have little recourse but to continue collecting material, sort it and bale it, store it, look for places to profitably unload what they can, and wait this mother-of-all-storms out.

Pete Fehrenbach is managing editor of Waste & Recycling News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

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