While environmental problems such as polluted oceans and shrinking rain forests may seem impossible to tackle on an individual level, recycling has proven to be a way for homeowners to make the planet a slightly cleaner, healthier place.
Just ask Alysa Dortort, 48, a Cabin John resident who puts bottles, cans, newspapers and junk mail out by the curb in her recycling bins once a week. "It's a little thing I can do to make an impact," Dortort said. "It's easy and convenient and makes me feel personally like I'm helping the environment."
Dortort is far from alone. Visit almost any local neighborhood on trash pickup day and you will see a brightly colored recycling bin sitting alongside the garbage cans. The bins, filled with glass or plastic bottles, newspapers, and aluminum cans, have become a fixture, as common as mailboxes, and we hardly notice them anymore.
It wasn't always this way, as Dortort knows. She recalls that while she was growing up in New Jersey, back around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970, "everything went into the trash." The word recycling as it's known today had no meaning to her; separating certain items from the trash was not done.
"It wasn't at all part of my culture. No one talked about it," she said.
U.S. curbside recycling began in earnest around 20 years ago, said Kate M. Krebs, executive director of the District-based National Recycling Coalition.
"Back then it was unique, now it's standard nationwide," she said.
In part, curbside recycling has become mainstream because local governments promote it as a way to reduce the trash that goes into their crowded landfills. In addition, residents have demanded it as a way to improve the environment, said John Snarr, principal environmental planner for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
Measuring the participation rate for curbside recycling in the region is difficult. But in many jurisdictions, the rate is well more than 50 percent. For example, a 2004 Prince George's County study of single-family homes found a "bin set-out rate" of 65 percent; an Anne Arundel study that same year found a 73 percent rate. Snarr noted that across the region, apartment building recycling rates are lower than those of single-family homes.
The area has no single regional authority to coordinate residential recycling, so each jurisdiction has somewhat different policies.
For example, the District, which a few years back canceled recycling during its fiscal crisis, now has the most cutting-edge curbside program in the area, Snarr said. This city has been moving to "single stream" collection and processing of recyclables, where all the items are taken in the same large bin, eliminating the need for residents to sort paper in a separate stack or for specialized trucks to come independently to a neighborhood, said Michael Taylor, Washington area director of recycling operations for Recycle America Alliance Inc., a Houston-based company.
"It's the wave of the future for curbside collection," Snarr predicted.
