Are they throwing away the recyclables?
BY VICI PAPAJOHN Gulf Breeze News vici@gulfbreezenews.com

Calls and emails have been coming in to the Gulf Breeze News from concerned city residents who want to know why they are seeing BFItrucks, not recycling trucks, picking up the contents of their blue recycling bins.

"I was driving home this morning from the grocery store and saw the BFIgarbage truck picking up our recycle bins and tossing the recycle material into the garbage truck," commented Summer King. "At first I thought the mechanical arm must be broken and then took a second glance and saw it was actually recycle materials. I'm really wondering where our recycle items actually end up? I normally see the three-section recycle truck out. Why am I separating my trash, and putting out my recyclables are they just going to be thrown away?"

The short answer is that the items are still being recycled. The long answer is that the process is just a little different sometimes.

"They are commingling the recyclables loads which will be separated later at a Material Recovery Facility," explains City Manager Edwin "Buz" Eddy. "There is only one truck to do the job and there are times when it is down, and they use a back-up means to get the job done."

When citizens see a garbage truck picking up recycling, the process looks as if it is being corrupted, but it is not. The normal procedure is curbside separation or sorting where a compartmentalized truck makes its routes through city streets and the driver sorts the recycled goods into the appropriate compartment based on color of glass, various kinds of plastics, metal and paper.Facility (MRF), and the recyclables go through additional sorting to minimize "contaminants" or inappropriate materials among a recyclable material.

According to Dave Szymanski, Assistant City Manager, loads are sorted to remove plastic bags from the loads of paper, remove colored glass from clear glass, and nonrecyclable plastics and cardboard is from the loads. When equipment problems crop up, as they have recently with Allied Waste's compartmental recycling vehicle, the backup plan is to collect commingled recyclables in a rear loader.

When residents see the rearloading garbage trucks dumping in recyclables, that just means that the compartmentalized truck is down. Normal waste pickup is now done almost entirely by hydraulic top loaders.

"Gulf Breeze never makes money and you never even break even on a recycling project," says Szymanski, "but it is the right thing to do. The city has been a Tree City for eons and they also are committed to recycling. A rear-loader just means it'll be sorted later."