It’s only been since January that Philadelphia has offered both weekly recycling pickup and “single stream recycling” (saving people from having to separate paper, plastic, glass, and metal), but these added conveniences are already showing some positive results. The amount of trash recycled in the past twelve months is 50 percent higher than it was in the previous twelve months, which is especially impressive considering that weekly and single stream recycling were not even implemented until five months into the last twelve-month period. Another important statistic: Philadelphia’s diversion rate (how much of all waste collected by the city is recycled) now stands at 12 percent, another all time high, but still short of Philadelphia’s current goal of a 25 percent diversion rate by 2015, and far shy of the 2000 goal of 35 to 40 percent. We imagine that the April introduction of the psychedelic recycling trucks will lead to an uptick in the diversion rate by the time of the next study. In case you need a reminder of exactly what materials you can (almost everything) and cannot (damn #5 yogurt containers!) put in your single stream recycling bucket, check out the full list here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 12:00 pm.