Doing Trash in a Different Way

By Tom Herriman

Recycling at Rabanco. Win a tour of the recycling center (see below).

Now the pick-up is every two weeks. We all got big ugly new containers where we just throw everything in. Ooops. Not the glass. We don't throw in the glass. That's still separate.

Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) says we are free to find other uses for the bright green and yellow containers that I, for one, still keep under the window seat.

Now, most of the sorting is done by 125-150 workers at Rabanco's recycling center in the shadow in Safeco Field in the SoDo area.

In a former steel mill, trash is loaded onto a conveyor belt where types of material are separated by gravity, magnetism, manual dexterity and suction power. Plastic bags are whooshed up a pipe with a giant sucking sound; magnets pull out the steel, and workers toss flattened boxes onto another moving belt. Heavy things sort themselves to the bottom of the pile, lighter things to the top. Once everything is separated, it is baled, bundled, shoveled and shoved into containers and shipped off to factories that will rearrange the molecules a little and make new paper, new cans, new glass bottles and new milk jugs (or porch furniture or decking). SPU gets $80/ton for clean mixed paper that will be recycled into newsprint.

SPU spokesperson Kim Ducote explained that reducing frequency of recycling pick-ups in North Seattle enables SPU to increase the frequency in South Seattle to bi-weekly instead of monthly.

All Seattle households now have just one collection day each week, alternating garbage and recycling one week with garbage and yard waste the next week.

Doing the sorting at Rabanco instead of in the home enables trucks to carry more on each trip, reducing transportation costs, Ducote explained. (And reducing air pollution and traffic congestion, she added.) Seattle hasn't had an increase in trash collection rates since 1984 and one is not planned until 2002, Ducote said.

FOR MORE INFO Visit SPU's web site, www.cityofseattle.net/util or call Seattle Public Utilities at (206) 684-3000.

Contest: Recycle Your Recycling Container

New city-provided recycling containers have made the old ones obsolete. There is now no clear or official use for the bright green and yellow "Mixed Paper" and "Newspaper" bins.

But since Seattle is a city of recyclers, we should be thinking of ways to recycle these, too.

The Seattle Press announces a competition for the best idea for re-using these obsolete recycling containers.

Up to three prize winners will receive: a one-year subscription to The Seattle Press and a guided tour of the Rabanco recycling center where our trash is sorted, baled and sold to the highest bidder.

Send your ideas to RECYCLING, The Seattle Press, 4128 Fremont Ave. N., Seattle WA 98103 or toseattlepress@seattlepress.com. Drawings or photos can be used to illustrate your proposal.

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