Introducing Wes Muir, Director, Communications, Waste Management, Inc.: On "Single Stream Recycling"
by John Laumer, Philadelphia 
on 11.20.07
Please welcome Wes Muir, Director of Communications for Waste Management, Inc. Wes will be joining us for a series of guest posts over coming months, delving into his firm's projects and explaining recycling trends. With America Recycles Day on November 15th, Wes chose, as his first topic, a recycling approach which has been gathering momentum in communities as well as in businesses across the country - single stream recycling.
"In 2007, it’s safe to say virtually everyone agrees recycling is good for our communities and environment. Nonetheless, recycling logistics can be a real challenge and recycling rates are far below what they could and should be. Meanwhile, the demand for consumer products with recycled-content is ever-increasing while supplies of raw materials are declining. Effective recycling of our waste will become central in our efforts to make society more sustainable over the coming years. As we celebrate America Recycles Day on Thursday, November 15th, it’s a great time for Americans to reflect on the impact our individual efforts can have on the drive toward a more sustainable future.
Traditionally viewed as an add-on to existing waste collection services, an increasing number of American municipalities and businesses are beginning to recognize that recycling should be a core focus of waste resource management, with garbage constituting what cannot be recycled. Progressive cities and companies are taking the lead by developing innovative ways to maximize the amount of recyclables they reclaim from their waste.
One way by which communities and businesses can rapidly and dramatically increase their recycling rates is by switching to Single Stream recycling programs. These programs, pioneered by Waste Management and refined over the past decade, can provide the high-quality recovered materials demanded by manufacturers while streamlining collection and transportation of waste.
Single Stream recycling simplifies the whole process by allowing customers to deposit recyclable paper, plastic, glass, steel and aluminum materials into a single container for collection. Single containers allow conventional collection trucks to collect all recyclables, rather than requiring multiple specialized vehicles. At the recycling center, the mixed recyclable stream is processed into sorted recyclable materials.
More than 500 municipalities have already instituted Single Stream recycling collection programs. Switching to Single Stream collection offers a number of benefits to local governments, including increasing the volume of recovered materials, boosting the diversion rate from local landfills, and reducing collection costs. The City of Denver switched to an automated Single Stream recycling system and the city’s recycling rates went up by nearly 42%.
In the past, legitimate reservations about the quality of materials recovered through Single Stream recycling fueled skepticism among mills and manufacturers. However, technological developments have facilitated higher quality recycled products while maintaining the efficiency and high-load capabilities of Single Stream recycling. Readily available, high-quality recyclables result in cheaper, higher quality products made from recycled materials, which in turn inspires consumer confidence.
As the leading recycler in North America, one third of our current portfolio of recycling facilities nationwide uses Single Stream technology. From 2002 to 2006, the volume of material processed in our Single Stream recycling facilities nearly tripled, from about 722,000 tons in 2002 to more than 2 million tons in 2006. We recently announced that we plan to triple the amount of materials we recycle by 2020 and Single Stream technology will play an important part in achieving that goal.
The waste disposal and recovery cycle involves multiple participants, all of whom have an interest in recovering as much as possible from what we throw away. The success of recycling programs depends not only on efficient collection and effective processing, but also ultimately on the willingness of consumers to participate and buy products manufactured from recycled goods. Meanwhile, forward-thinking businesses and cities are taking the lead by switching to Single Stream recycling to simplify the process in the home and at the curbside, and that’s a huge step in the right direction."
Wes Muir is the Director of Corporate Communications for Waste Management, Inc.
Wes Muir
Director of Communications
Waste Management
713 328 7053 (P)
905 633 3940 (P)
905 483 3099 (M)
See also: Jasmin's sequential interview posts with Waste Management CEO, David Steiner, here, and here. Lloyd's post on America Recycles is here.
Please be sure to leave your suggestions and questions here for Wes. We're looking forward to learning more from him.
Image credit:: Waste Management, Inc.
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I have a question for Mr. Muir.
Is there anything residents should do to help the sorting of materials in places that use single source recycling.
Should I still sort my magazines and paper into a bag even though it goes into the same container. Will it be easier for the sorting process, or is it better to dump things together so it can be automatically sorted?
What is are the biggest source of headaches for single source? In other words what do people throw in the recycle bin that is hard to sort and lowers the value of you end product.
I'd like to know these things too.
I believe I should remove bottle caps and squash bottles so more fit in the bag/truck. Do the bottle caps go in the recycling too? I've always assumed they do. What about jam-jar lids? Envelopes with windows? Envelopes with plastic bubble protective stuff inside? Broken glass?
How clean should stuff be? I rinse out food cans and bottles in the 'dirty' water after I've washed everything else (dishes, pots etc). I don't rinse beer/wine cans/bottles etc, or tetra-paks. I know some people do.
I live in Seattle, which has relatively high recycling rates. I wanted to know why they won't take back aluminum foil. It seems like a relatively pure prouduct, with high resale value. I understand that it will likely have food contamination on it, but wouldn't organic waste burn off during a melting process?
I attended a speech by a waste engineer awhile back a big portion of his talk was about how BAD of an idea single stream recycling is. While the intake of recyclable materials will likely increase, the value of the recyclables goes down considerably. Most often, recycled waste gets sold to recycling facilities and the product is worth more sorted (for obvious reasons). By switching to a single stream method, the city gets less money for the recyclables. The price difference between pre-sorted and single stream is so great that the increased volume of materials recycled does not make up for the decrease in sales revenue.
Does anyone know more about this aspect that can shed more light?
Thanks for your inquiries and my apologies for my tardiness in responding.
When it comes to determining what should be included in your single stream recycling, residents should follow what their community has
determined be included in their recycling bins. That said there are a few constants that we like to see:
- Plastic bags should be kept out of the recycling. No need to separate magazines and paper, the single stream technology does that!
- Non-recyclable materials such as vinyl hose, bubble wrap, blister packs should not be included as well as plastics toys, plastic tubs
and car parts.
- Bottle caps are okay and envelopes with windows are usually okay.
- Cans and jars should be rinsed to remove food residue but not to clean.
- Aluminum foil should not be included as it is made in a different process than aluminum cans and has different properties.
- From a safety perspective, needles and household hazardous wastes obviously should not be included.
With respect to the value of the materials that are processed through a single stream technology, the value is greater for a number of reasons. First and foremost, our customers demand it. The threshold levels for contamination are very low and through this technology we've virtually had no problems. In fact this is the reason we pioneered this technology to make recycling more
economically sustainable. Secondly, there may be some confusion on how this technology works. While the various materials we receive are co-mingled, they are separated through fans, magnets, eddy currents and optical scanners.
I would encourage you to visit our new Thinkgreen.com website and click on the recycling page to see a video of how a single stream recycling processing system works.
Thank you once again for your questions.