"Lighten the Load in Sarpy County" kicked off in February with a meeting to discuss how we can improve recycling in Sarpy County. There are good reasons why this is of concern - the first of which is our landfill closing this summer and all county trash will be hauled to David City. Our trash will be commuting to a landfill over 60 miles away. The carbon footprint is going to be much larger as a result and the only way to combat that is to Lighten the Load!
The EPA estimates that every 2.6 tons of recycling removed from the trash pile is the equivalent to 1 car's emissions for 1 year. With that ratio, residential recycling in Bellevue prevented carbon emissions equal to 1,966 cars in 2013. All we have to do is remove more recycling from the waste stream to decrease the carbon footprint. (Correction notice: this statistic is corrected from that given at our 2/9 meeting. It was originally overstated due to a miscalculation).
Papillion Sanitation provided the 2013 statistics for approx. 15.5k Bellevue residential home's trash, recycling and yard waste who receive hauling services via city contract. We found that Bellevue's residential recycling rate in 2013 (which uses total recycling + yard waste/total waste hauled) was 24%; however, when you look at recycling alone, the rate goes down to 8%! And we believe that county wide, the recycling rate could be even lower given most residents and businesses contract recycling services on an individual basis. With a national average recycling rate of 35%, we can do much better!
Another important reason we should remove recycling from the trash is to stimulate a green economy in Sarpy county. With an 8% recycling rate, recycling businesses cannot survive here. This is not a case of the "chicken and the egg" - we need the valuable product removed from the waste stream which will then stimulate green business.
We have an outreach effort forming for all cities in Sarpy County. We've launched a new website for the county called sarpyrecycles.org. If you are willing to volunteer for this important outreach effort, please contact Ruth Richter!