Monday, March 3, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Perceptions differ about the effectiveness of recycling. Some view the recycling container as half empty while others see it half full.
Not only are economics taken into account, but the environmental impact is also taken into consideration by recycling's proponents. But others view recycling as having been ineffective.
To James Bayer, operations manager of the Silver State Disposal Recycling Center, baling and selling everything from newsprint to metals not only generates dollars -- it also makes sense.
"Recycling is a mindset," Bayer said. "And with the growth of our population in this valley, we really have to start thinking about the future of our community."
But it was the ineffectiveness of many recycling facilities and regional recycling programs that was targeted by New York Times Magazine reporter John Tierney, who wrote in June 1996, that "recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America: a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources ... "
In the article, entitled "Recycling is Garbage," Tierney reasoned that most recycling efforts are expensive, inefficient and counterproductive, and that it would be easier and far less expensive to bury all the trash in a 35-mile-square "national garbage heap."
The article generated 2,000 letters -- most of them from writers expressing outrage, and was dismissed as "simplistic" by Maribel Marin, senior research associate with the Los Angeles division of Natural Resources Defense Council, a private, nonprofit environmental group.
But Marin is among many environmentalists and industry officials who acknowledge that many material recovery facilities -- also known as MRFs -- throughout the nation are horribly inefficient.
"A lot of MRFs have had trouble," Marin said.
"A lot of them are white elephants, and they're bleeding on the vine," said Bayer, who explained that many material recovery facilities are monstrous in size, and not flexible enough to efficiently process low volumes of recyclable refuse during lulls in the recycles market.
An example is the San Marcos recycling plant built in 1994 to process waste generated in San Diego County.
The plant was the main contributor to a financial crisis that took the county trash system to the brink of bankruptcy before it was shut down by Thermo Electron, the firm that had built and operated the plant.
"Some of these plants cost close to $100 million to build," Bayer said. "We didn't go that route. We kept things on a smaller scale, and this facility was designed to give us greater flexibility in attacking the waste stream."
Among those who agree with this goal is Darlene Cartier, waste reduction coordinator at UNLV's Department of Environmental Studies. But Cartier questions the means to achieve the end.
She explained that in 1993, the state set a goal to recycle 25 percent of the waste stream, but Southern Nevada is nowhere near the target percentage mainly because of a lack of incentives.
"There is obviously a low participation, especially in the curbside program," said Cartier, who referred to county statistics indicating that in 1995, only 273,000 tons or just under 13 percent of the total amount of 1,854,156 tons of waste were recycled.
"I would like to see some incentives," Cartier said. "Perhaps, an offer of reduced hauling rates to those who participate in (curbside and business) recycling programs."
"With curbside recycling, we're getting about 45 percent participation," Bayer said. "It's highest in the track home areas -- where everyone sees their neighbors putting out recycling containers, and it's lowest in the scatters, where you might have only one guy on the street."
He says that Silver State's $3.4 million recycling center in North Las Vegas, built in 1991, has operated effectively.
Indeed, Steve Kalish of Silver State reports that during 1996 the company sold 82,000 tons of recycled materials to different processors. "Our program has grown tremendously since we started (in 1991)," Kalish says.
The recycling division at Silver State employs 370 workers, including 140 subcontracted laborers who sort trash at area hotels.
Through their efforts, 300 tons of material are recycled each day in Southern Nevada.
And while this amount would seem to pall in light of the 6,000 tons of refuse buried each day at the Southern Nevada disposal sight in Apex, 60 miles north of Las Vegas, Bayer noted that statistics can be deceiving.
He points out that much of that refuse is from the area's thriving home construction industry, and the bulk of it is dirt -- which is considered to be clean fill.
Apparently, from the response to Tierney's June 1996 article in the New York Times Magazine, many Americans are thinking about recycling.
Tierney, when asked if he has any regrets over the article, or if he's pleased that his article seemed to induce so many people to think more about recycling, replied, "No regrets -- and if people want to spend their time thinking about garbage, that's their business."
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