Finding Alternative Recycling Solutions for Ypsilanti

A change to Ypsilanti’s recycling program has forced residents to rethink their daily recycling habits.

The City of Ypsilanti’s recycling program once included a single-stream curbside pick-up for residents. This meant that all recyclable items from paper to plastic to tin and glass could be dumped into a single bin, a process that was designed to make recycling easier and more convenient.

But as of August 2019, residents must now separate certain items like glass from their normal recycling.

This change is the result of a global shift in reclaimed materials purchasing, causing the value of these items to take a nosedive.

Without the demand for certain recyclable materials in the global market, several Material Recovery Facilities (MRF) in Michigan have stopped accepting glass. The Western Washtenaw Recycling Authority (WWRA), where Ypsilanti currently takes its recycling, is one of the MRFs that is no longer taking glass.

“It’s kind of disheartening because a lot of people recycle around here,” said Josh McCullough, 42, resident of Normal Park.

Residents like McCullough say that they now must be extra careful of what they are putting in their recycling bins and that the change to the program has been prohibitive.

Ypsilanti residents can obtain a recycling pass card from the city clerk’s office that will allow them to take their barred recyclables to the Recycle Ann Arbor drop-off center located on Ellsworth Road. But some see this alternative as an inconvenient barrier.

“Having those barriers in place makes you kinda wonder how much more it’s going to chip away over time,” McCullough said.

Some residents keep secondary bins for the prohibited items. And according to McCullough, there are members of the community that offer to take a bulk load of glass to the drop-off center for other neighbors.

However, there is a concern in the community that some people will grow tired of making the additional effort and will ultimately just throw their glass and other items in the trash.

McCullough said he believes that the single-stream system helped to encourage people to recycle and to “do what you should do.”

Ypsilanti Mayor Beth Bashert has been personally recycling for 30 years and says that she and her spouse have developed techniques to move their home closer to zero waste. Things like finding everyday products that don’t use plastic packaging and new uses for empty wine bottles ensures that they aren’t contributing to a landfill.

Bashert offers a bit of advice to the residents of Ypsilanti who may be reeling from the changes by referencing the common saying that we know, “reduce, reuse, recycle.”

“Concentrate on those first two steps,” Bashert said. “If we can reduce the amount of physical waste and glass products, that’s great [and] reuse whenever possible.”

Successful implementation of a change that affects an entire population requires clear communication between the city and its residents. But it seems that effectively getting information to residents has been a hurdle for Ypsilanti.

Several residents say that they were not adequately warned by the city about the changes, but rather heard about them by word of mouth from neighbors or the community Facebook page.

“We should have handled that a little differently, and in the future, we will,” Bashert said. “We could have done a more expansive explanation, so people weren’t so surprised and unhappy about it.”

Bashert said that she received a lot of negative feedback about the change because people genuinely want to recycle their glass.

Recycling is still an important priority for the city of Ypsilanti, according to the Department of Public Services (DPS). They have been spreading the word about the change to the program and have been advocating for the increased use of the Recycle Ann Arbor facility.

“The city of Ypsilanti is committed to recycling and committed to being able to provide various recycling options to residents,” said Ron Akers, director of DPS.

Ypsilanti has had a partnership with Recycle Ann Arbor for about two years and held a joint event on October 19 that the Ypsilanti Farmers market in Depot Town. The event offered a drop-off for Styrofoam and glass and provided a sign-up for residents to receive a pass card to the Ann Arbor drop-off center.

Akers said that turn out for the event was beyond expectations. 70 residents signed up for the passcard, and Recycle Ann Arbor picked up approximately five cubic yards of Styrofoam and close to two cubic yards of glass.

Last year Ann Arbor recycled more than 11,900 tons of recyclable materials from drop-off and curbside pick-up. And now with Ypsilanti residents bringing their secondary recycling to the drop-off locations, that number will likely increase.

“We want to increase participation and decrease contamination,” said Erica Bertrum, communications director for Recycle Ann Arbor. “Just increasing the amount of tonnage isn’t necessarily a huge win for the environment.”

Contaminated recyclable materials in a single-stream system will taint a batch and cause it to be discarded and sent to a landfill. Ann Arbor’s contamination rate is between 9% and 11%, which is below the national average of 16–18%.

Resources are available on Recycle Ann Arbor’s website that is designed to educate people on how to “recycle right.” Including an A-Z guide that will give details for how to dispose of any item or material, and a guide of the top ten contaminants that end up in curbside bins.

Bashert has large goals for recycling in Ypsilanti but says that they are way behind the curve in several different ways when it comes to recycling. For one, the city has no public recycling.

During the next budget season, Bashert intends to acquisition money for public recycling bins to be placed around the city in locations near waste bins.

Bashert also would like to implement a curbside compost pick-up to reduce Ypsilanti’s physical waste.

“More of our solid waste is food than you might imagine,” Bashert said. “And that’s valuable waste, by the way.”

The focus of the city of Ypsilanti is to continuously make its recycling program better for residents and to improve the city overall.

“I’d like our recycling program to reflect the values of our city, and I don’t think it does yet,” Bashert said.

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Originally published at http://factofthematter912068917.wordpress.com on October 23, 2019.