Since most of you don’t live near us, we don’t usually write about our local Government’s activities… but this one is really good and we thought it was worth sharing…

We’re really happy with a recent move by Baltimore County’s department of public works division to offer unified recycling (a.k.a. ’single stream recycling’) for a wide range of metal, glass, plastic, and paper goods.

Up until recently, Baltimore County had been collecting trash once per week and recycling once per week. Unfortunately, the recycling schedule rotated item pick-up biweekly, with plastic, metal and glass on one week, and paper separate on the next.  This led to a build-up of plastic and glass bottles in our garage that would overflow our recycling bins.

With the new change, we can put all the items together in a single bin that gets picked up every week (Monday mornings, for us).

While we were already pretty avid recyclers, this change really makes it easy for us because we don’t have to keep separate bins for separate goods. Plus, we think the move will encourage our neighbors to recycle much more than in the past. It’s much less daunting to have two bins than four, and by separating recyclable goods out, you keep less trash on hand overall… We threw away just three small bags this week for a family of four!

But it begs the question–if we aren’t separating the goods, who is? Is there some big recycling machine that’s doing the sorting?

While we haven’t been able to find specific information on Baltimore County’s practices, I did catch a local news clip a few weeks ago about how a neighboring county handles it. They use a combination of hand sorters and tools (like strong magnets, for instance), to separate goods.

After accounting for paying workers wages and facilities cost, the neighboring county actually nets a profit on the operation by selling the valuable recycling materials (mostly the metals) to manufacturers.

Even though sorting paper out for recycling doesn’t generate a profit, it does reduce landfill use and the costs are offset by the profits from the metal. And, by offering single stream recycling, it encourages more people to participate, which actually generates more metal recycling and increases the county’s overall take from the operation.

And that’s pretty sweet all the way around.

What do you think? Does your county offer single stream recycling? Has it changed your behavior?

P.S. If you’re looking for the list of everything Baltimore County will pick up in single stream recycling, you can find that right here.

Originally posted on One Project Closer

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