Last week, I condemned a proposal to eliminate Chattanooga’s curbside recycling program because the savings would hardly make a dent in the amount needed to give raises to our police and firefighters. And eliminating recycling also isn’t consistent with who we are in Chattanooga, or who we want to be.
At the same time, I’ll be the first to admit our recycling system isn’t perfect. I want recycling in our city to be better, and so do many other Chattanoogans. But we haven’t been as transparent to the public about how those efforts are coming along, so allow me to provide an update:
More than 35,000 households participate in Chattanooga’s curbside recycling program, surpassing half of all city garbage service users. We recycled nearly 30,000 tons of materials last year, and our goal is to increase recycling participation annually by 5%.
Participating residents recently received a recycling guide reminding them of what can and cannot be recycled through our system. This is important because contamination — from plastic bags to food residue — poses a major challenge to our sustainability efforts, often rendering entire batches of recyclable material unusable, and increasing our costs to process. To protect the value and purpose of recycling, we must tackle contamination at its source with education, enforcement and accountability.
Part of the educational approach is our partnership with Hamilton County Schools to educate students about the fundamentals of recycling. This program is in high demand, and we’ve served more than 400 students across 10 schools.