[Chat] Fwd: MESSAGE FROM MARY PAT CLARKE

[Stephen J Gewirtz]

Here is some really good news about the importance of recycling.  It brings money to the City, and most importantly, it saves the energy that would be required to smelt more aluminum, manufacture more plastics, etc. while reserving more of our landfills for things that cannot be recycled. Our City government is doing something right! Steve. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:   A Message from Mary Pat Clarke 14th District Baltimore City Council Dear 14th District Leaders and Friends,   “This BUD’s from you!”   Baltimore City’s aluminum is sold and then processed to make beer cans for Anheuser Busch.  Our plastic is sold and sent to Raleigh, ground into pellets and converted into new bottles for Coca Cola.   Even plastic bags, which are prohibited for recycling, are yanked from the stream of recyclables, baled and sold (at 1/2-cent per pound) to a company called Trex, which converts them into recycled lumber which can be used to build decks and benches.        For all the enthusiasm about Single Stream Recycling and all the yellow barrels we lined-up freezing to buy, many of my constituents have confided that, “I wonder if we really just dump most of what’s collected.”   We don’t.    The City’s single stream material carries only a 5.28 percentage of residue, and the City has earned $104,463.34 in Single Stream revenue for January and February of 2008, our proceeds from the sale of sorted and baled recyclables.   (The City SELLS our recyclables to Waste Management at a blended monthly commodity rate, pays a processing fee of $57.00 a ton and currently nets $29.76 a ton.)      Thanks to a feisty group of Roland Park Place residents, we organized a June 17 investigative tour of Waste Management Recycle America, in Elkridge, where all of Baltimore City’s recyclables are delivered. We even donned yellow hard hats and safety vests to follow our recyclables from delivery to baling.    The Waste Management Recycle America plant is comprised of a series of slatted conveyor belts which sequentially shake-and-roll the ever-finer-by-finer separation of materials.   Employees along the conveyors hand-separate specific items, like plastic bags, and place them in beltside containers for separate baling. By the end of the line, aluminum cans, for example, roll through like little aluminum balls — and any remaining residue is hand-separated.   In Baltimore City, City load-packers pick-up our recyclables, then deliver them to the Reisterstown Road Transfer Station. There the recyclables are loaded into huge trucks with slatted, movable floors, which permit direct unloading onto Waste Management’s conveyor belt system.  At the end of the conveyor process, products are bound into huge bales for sales and delivery to the end-users.   Thanks, Roland Park Place, for the use of your van and the challenge to “check it out” in person.  Thanks, Mr. David Taylor, District Manager of WM Recycle America, who rode the van and briefed us on the entire single source operation. Thanks, Kurt Kocher, “the voice” of Public Works, who rode along as well and shared the City’s perspective.   Most of all, thanks to all of the “Doubting Thomases” who inspired this trek into the land of second chances for our bottles, cans, papers.   “This BUD’s for you!”   Thanks. Mary Pat Baltimore City Council., 14th District 550 City Hall 100 North Holliday Street 21202 410-396-4814 (0) (Whose [EMAIL PROTECTED]  address is about to expire, with no recycle options available.) Please use [EMAIL PROTECTED].

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