LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - City officials are considering a three-year plan to reduce landfill trash and encourage recycling in Lincoln.
The proposed ordinance, which is still in the draft stage, would allow consumers to either take their recycling material to one of nearly 30 free recycling sites or pay their waste haulers to take their recycling at the curb, the Lincoln Journal Star (https://bit.ly/21pMnsk ) reports.
Tentatively, the draft says cardboard will be banned from the Lincoln landfill in April 2017. Newsprint would be banned a year later in 2018, and then recyclable paper would be banned in April 2019.
Donna Garden, deputy director for the Public Works and Utilities Department, said recycling all paper would cut the landfill’s waste by 28 percent. She said the recycling program would also have an educational component that would begin ahead of the cardboard ban.
Garden said the city is banning cardboard first because it’s easily recognizable and a very valuable commodity.
Steve Hatten, owner of Paragon Sanitation and a member of the Lincoln Solid Waste and Recycling Association, said that many of the city’s waste haulers are already moving into the recycling business in anticipation of the potential bans.
Under the proposed plan, all waste haulers would be required to offer curb recycling services to their customers. They could contract the service out to another company.
The penalty system for putting recyclable materials into regular trash will be a potential misdemeanor charge, the same punishment for the yard-waste ban. Lincoln residents aren’t permitted to put yard waste into the trash between April 1 and Dec. 1.
“In 22 years we have issued zero citations for the yard-waste ban,” Garden said.
The proposed recycling ban won’t include materials such as Styrofoam, glass and plastics.
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Information from: Lincoln Journal Star, https://www.journalstar.com
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