City Moving Forward with Recycling Bin Plan
The plan was approved as part of the 2013 budget earlier this week.
Lakewood is moving forward with plans to issue recycling bins to residents, replacing the blue bags currently used.
The plan was included in the 2013 budget approved Monday.
Chris Perry, unit manager of refuse and recycling in the city, said he hopes the switch will contribute to a “big boost” in recycling.
Mayor Michael Summers does, too. The city has to pay landfill fess, but gets money for recyclables. Summers told Patch in early December that the program would cost the city money up front, but could eventually save Lakewood as much as $100,000 per year.
Summers said the details for the plan still have to be determined. The city needs to do some tests, like seeing how many bins fit on one tree lawn, when the weather improves.
The bins will be passed out to residents over three years, Perry said.
This news is certain to make quite a few Patch readers happy—in our poll, 79 percent of voters were in favor of switching to curbside recycling bins.
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angelo
8:16 pm on Saturday, December 22, 2012
Lakewood has over 50 tavern and restaurants that throw away a lot of cans and bottles and plastics. If this city was serious about recycling it would make it easy for businesses to recycle by providing them with recycle containers. Again the initial costs of the containers would be made up for by the selling of the materials to recyclers. If they really wanted to make recycling profitable they would eliminate the middle man by investing in their own equipment to crush and shred these materials and sell directly to metal, glass and plastic processors.
K M Smith
9:48 pm on Saturday, December 22, 2012
It's not so lucrative to sell recyclables these days. It definitely saves the city in disposal costs though.
K M Smith
9:49 pm on Saturday, December 22, 2012
Stoked to hear this... the winds on Thursday left recyclables strewn across our street. Of course, the good folks who pick up our garbage also cleaned up the mess. It'll sure be nice to not have to have to pull trash out of the street to get into my driveway.
DLSJR
9:28 am on Saturday, December 29, 2012
Why don't they also do their test while the weather is not permitting? I would like to see how many bin fit on a tree lawn with a foot of snow and plow truck going by. Also (I could be wrong) I thought residents are not allowed to put recyclables inside trash bins, and they would be charged a fine if they did so. The city has good ideas, but has no idea how to plan or follow through. Perfect example is the Clifton sidewalk project. Its been 13 months and they have not finished what they started or promised. Also everyone had to have been smoking crack while planning/inspecting it. I still have concrete chunks in my tree lawn and had to fill in the holes they left in my yard myself. They never came back to fill in other peoples properties on Clifton either.. Watch your step or you will roll your ankle on the edge of the sidewalk like me.