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City Of Pittsburgh To Make Recycling Easier

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Oct 28, 2008 9:54 pm US/Eastern

City Of Pittsburgh To Make Recycling Easier

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ― Mayor Luke Ravenstahl is "talking trash."

The city is about to make it a whole lot easier to recycle. Currently, 8,000 to 9,000 tons of curbside trash is recycled in the city every year- but Mayor Ravenstahl is kicking off the "Together Green" campaign.

It means that a pilot program calling for single-stream recycling is being expanded to the rest of the city.

"Single-stream recycling is significant," says the mayor, "because residents can put all of their recyclables together in one blue bag rather than separating by type as they do now."

Beginning November 3rd, all city residents can begin single-stream recycling. The convenience made the pilot program a huge success.

"Since we started the program in January in half of the city we've seen an increase of about 30 percent in the tonnage of our recycling we're able to collect," City Recycling Coordinator Shawn Wiggle noted.

In addition, items recycled at curbside will be expanded to include all paper materials like newspapers, junk mail, cardboard, magazines and phone books.

Also, local businesses will be encouraged to recycle with 150 recycling bins being placed around the district.

Finally, the city's sports teams will become "black, gold, and green" by recycling both behind the scenes and in the stands with bottles and cans.

Recycling also means cash for trash. For every ton recycled the city saves $25 in landfill fees and gains more than $40 for every ton of garbage recycled.

"We have already saved almost $200,000 in landfill fees, and in addition we will generate by year's end in 2008 roughly $700,000," Mayor Ravenstahl said.

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