Why Are US Cities Suspending Recycling Programs?
Around the United States, recycling programs are being suspended as a result of staffing shortages and high costs. In December, Nashville became one of the latest cities to suspend their curbside recycling pickup, after staffing shortages placed them behind on regular trash pickup. Recycling pickup was suspended and the recycling trucks and staff were reassigned to trash collection, as a chance to allow the workers time to catch up on their regular routes.
Nashville isn’t the only Tennessee city suspending recycling programs. In July 2021, Chattanooga briefly suspended their recycling program because of a shortage of truck drivers. It resumed in November 2021 after a pay increase recruited more drivers. In May 2020, Kingsport suspended their recycling program after the cost of their recyclables became too high to be maintained. Their curbside recycling program has not yet resumed.
Why are recycling programs being suspended?
With 94 percent of Americans supportive of recycling, shouldn't it be an essential service? Despite the high importance of recycling, cities are not required to provide the service. In fact, there are no uniform policies in the United States about recycling. It varies state to state, city to city. There are tens of thousands of municipalities in the US, and each has their own recycling rules.
When China banned exported plastics in 2018, this was a huge shock to recycling systems across the US. Before the ban, the United States offloaded nearly 4,000 shipping containers worth of recyclable materials onto China’s shores every day. After the ban, the US was left without a place to send their recyclable materials. The ban revealed the weakness of the domestic market for recyclables, and many recycling programs were cut back, even before the coronavirus pandemic added an even greater strain to the system.
The China ban and the coronavirus pandemic have drawn awareness to difficulties the US recycling system already faced. The EPA acknowledges at least three challenges to US recycling:
Confusion about what can/cannot be recycled leads to contamination
Recycling infrastructure cannot keep pace with today's waste stream
Domestic markets for recyclable materials need to be strengthened
The first challenge, which encompasses wishcycling, will be further explored in the next blog post. The other two challenges are directly impacting the increased cuts of recycling programs. The relentless flow of the waste stream - especially coming off the holiday season! - can overwhelm the current infrastructure, which is what is currently happening in Nashville. With a shortage of workers - whether that be from Covid or the competitive job market - it means that when workers become overwhelmed by the waste stream, recycling is sacrificed.
As well, when China banned exported plastics, it revealed how underprepared the US was to manage their own recyclable materials. Recycling is a business, and if there isn't profit in it, then it won't be maintained. This is what happened in Kingsport. Kingsport sent their recyclable materials to WestRock in Knoxville, but it became too expensive. Specifically with mixed paper, there wasn't enough of a market for it, so it was being sent to a landfill anyways. This fluctuation in the market meant that Kingsport was paying for materials to be recycled that would eventually end up in the landfill. The cost just didn't make sense.
What is the solution?
With the unrelenting changes of the pandemic, it is even harder to predict the future of recycling. However, in November 2021, the EPA released their National Recycling Strategy which centers on creating a circular economy. As described on the EPA’s website, “a circular economy reduces material use, redesigns materials to be less resource intensive, and recaptures ‘waste’ as a resource to manufacture new materials and products.” The strategy addresses the challenges discussed above, and would be a significant step towards creating more uniform recycling policies.
However, solid waste departments are still faced with the significant challenge of staff shortages. As shown in Chattanooga and Nashville, adequate staffing greatly impacts whether or not recycling programs are successful in a community. With this in mind, the next time you see solid waste employees picking up your curbside recycling or you go to a recycling convenience center, remember to say thank you to the workers there and let them know you appreciate the hard work that they do!