Dive Brief:
- According to a sustainability report, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Sustainability Report Card: Scoring Our Economic, Environmental and Social Health, the two counties have cut back on the amount of waste disposed at landfills -- but the recycling rate has stayed virtually stagnant since 1999.
- An average of 229 pounds of yard waste was diverted from entering landfills in 2013, up from 75 pounds diverted per person in 1999. The volume of residential waste brought to landfills has only dropped an average of 0.7% per year in the 15 year period between 1999 and 2013.
- The report found that the rate of recycling decreased at an average annual rate of 0.1%; the region recycled approximately 8 pounds more per person in 1999 than in 2013.
Dive Insight:
Recommendations for improving the recycling rate include varied approaches that cover short-, mid-, and long-term solutions. The region could start a “pay-as-you-throw” plan that may reduce the volume of waste residents discard. Other possibilities include implementing a regional “zero-waste” policy, creating a recycling law with minimum requirements, or requiring small businesses to contract recycling services.
Additional measures cited in the report include educating the public about recycling practices and creating the infrastructure necessary for food waste recycling. Focusing on key policies could get the ball rolling on improving the community's recycling rate, but it will likely be a time-consuming process.
Charlotte is pushing forward with a variety of a recycling measures: Blue Sphere announced a new food-to-energy facility is planned for the Charlotte area; pizza boxes can be recycled by placing them directly into recycling bins; and even though a recycling project at the Charlotte Douglas airport got off to a rough start, that did not deter officials, who are restructuring the plan after the initial program hit some snags.
