by Urban Woodswalker
Regional Secondary Materials Collection
In San Diego County, each city (and most of the densely populated unincorporated areas) has some level of curbside collection programs for residential recyclables. The widespread adoption of curbside collection programs is due in large part to the County of San Diego’s mandator recycling ordinance (further outlined in Local Incentives, page 25), as well as financial assistance provided to cities and haulers through the County’s Technical Assistance Project (TAP) grants (see Local Incentives, p. 26) Recipients of these grants are required to include collection of plastic beverage containers, aluminum, glass and newspaper in their recycling programs.
The curbside collection programs are complemented by a network or private commercial recyclers, private- and publically-sponsored buy back centers, scrap yards, drop-off sites, and diversion activities at the major landfills.
To further the collection of recyclable materials, the County of San Diego awards non-competitive tonnage grants of $ 7.75 per ton to cities and to haulers in the unincorporated area for designated residential recyclables documented to have been diverted from County landfills. The County Board of Supervisors has allocated a total of $ 2 million for this program for FY 1992, of which $ 90@ was awarded for diverting 11,727 tons of recydables during the first quarter. (It should be noted that because the City of San Diego operates its own landfill, it is exempt from both the mandatory recycling ordinance, and the Tonnage Grant Project).
The County of San Diego’s mandatory recycling ordinance and grant programs, the City of San Diego’s comprehensive recycling programs, and the growing private sector recycling infrastructure will ensure a reliable source of secondary materials for remanfacturing industries well into the next decade. County and City reporting requirements will also supplement ongoing waste characterization studies so that interested end-users can be provided with reliable, up to date, feedstock inventory reports.
Regional Secondary Materials Collection
As already described, a strong recycling infrastructure currently exists in the San Diego region, resulting in large quantities of secondary materials being recovered from the wastestream. The following table provides an estimate of the materials that are currently recovered from the regional wastestream:
| Table 3 | ||||||
| Estimated Recovered Secondary Materials in San Diego County (1990) | ||||||
| Commodity
Cardboard |
1990 Tonnage 507,414 |
Estimated Recovered Percentage (1989) 41% |
Resulting Baseline Recovered Tonnage 208,040 |
|||
| Note- Percentages are based on the results of the County of San Diego Waste Notation & Market Study (lM) | ||||||
More Articles
Copied from SQLJ ยป Recycling Articles