The mixed bag of community recycling

It's barely daylight in Rhode Island's capital city, and Dani Simons is cruising around in her Saturn with an eye on the bins and bags that dot residential streets.

By simply observing what's left curbside for garbage trucks, she gets a sense of how Providence is faring in its efforts to toss out less and recycle more. The city, which recycles about 10 or 11 percent of all waste, lags behind most of the state, and Ms. Simons is one of the dedicated people here trying to give recycling a boost.

What she finds this day is a mixed bag: On some streets, blue and green recycling bins line the sidewalks like dutiful sentries, but in some less-affluent parts of town, bins are few and trash barrels are stuffed to overflowing.

Thirty-two years after capturing the popular imagination during the first observance of Earth Day, America's recycling revolution appears to have hit a wall. Since 1995, the share of waste that is recycled has barely budged each year – inching from 26 percent that year to 28.1 percent in 1999, to 30.1 in 2000 (the latest data available).

Reasons for the stall-out are varied – and disputed.

Some experts see a fading commitment on the part of the public to push toward recycling fully half of all waste material – a target many advocates still insist is achievable. Others note that recycling gains have been partially offset by the reality that each American today discards almost 50 percent more trash than on that first Earth Day in 1970. Still others say recycling needs to break out of its current emphasis on households and break through to businesses.

"Residential recycling is 20 years old in most communities and is mature," says Susan Hubbard, who runs the residential recycling program in St. Paul, Minn. "It gets harder every time we try to add a new material." There's much more opportunity to recover waste materials from the commercial sector, which accounts for 75 percent of the overall waste stream, than from homes, where low-hanging fruit such as aluminum cans is already being harvested, she adds.

Still, recycling has become ingrained enough that today 140 million Americans recycle – more than the number who vote in national elections. And the fact that in 2000, recycling edged above 30 percent creates optimism that the EPA's target of 35 percent could be reached by 2005.

Kate Krebs of the National Recycling Coalition in Alexandria, Va., likens the way citizens recycle to the way people now automatically reach for their seat belts whenever they get behind the wheel. "I'm really thrilled with how Americans have taken on the recycling habit," she says.

She now sees people in public places hesitating to put recyclables in trash cans, and setting aside bottles and plastic cups in the hope that they will be recycled. Places like sports stadiums are difficult venues to start recycling, but they hold high potential for diverting waste from landfills or incinerators, she adds.

Here in Rhode Island, the smallest state, there is just one landfill, so trash disposal has a certain degree of urgency. With barely 1 million residents, compared with New York City's 8 million, Rhode Island still recycles more newspaper, glass, aluminum, steel cans, and plastic bottles each week than does the Big Apple.

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