By CHRISTOPHER BEDFORD
Observer Contributor
Feb. 6, 2008

Twenty years ago, the District of Columbia passed an ambitious recycling plan that called for the city to recycle 45 percent of its waste by 1994. In 2004 – a decade after this goal should have been reached – the city was only recycling about 13 percent of its waste.

After several months of investigation, the Observer has found that the city and the Department of Public Works, which manages and monitors recycling in the city, has continually made excuses for its poor record, lacks adequate enforcement and accountability, and has failed to file an annual report on the status of recycling in the city since 2004, as required by city law.

In fact, at the city’s four main municipal buildings – including the Frank D. Reeves Municipal Center near U-Street, where the Department of Public Works is housed – only 15 percent of trash was recycled in 2004, according to city reports.

The lack of adequate recycling in the city has frustrated many, including Austin Danner who lives in a three-story apartment building in the Tenleytown neighborhood. In August 2007, Danner, 23, noticed that the blue recycling bin he had been using with success for nearly a year had disappeared.

After calling the city, a new bin was dropped off, only to be taken again a few days later. After another call to the city, Danner discovered that his building should never have been provided residential recycling services to begin with, since the building is technically commercial property.

The city divides its recycling into residential and commercial properties. The city is responsible for recycling at municipal buildings and at residential properties, which includes single-family homes or family complexes with three or fewer units, Department of Public Works spokeswoman Linda Grant said.

In 2004, there were 110,000 residential households that received city recycling services, according to a city report. Based on this definition of residential property and 2005 U.S. Census Bureau data on the number of the city’s housing units, less than 40 percent of the city’s housing units actually qualify as “residential” for recycling purposes.

Observer chart by SAKINA RANGWALA and LISA CHIU.

Commercial properties are contracted to private waste haulers and include apartments and office buildings as well as churches, museums, private schools and even public schools.

According to a 2004 city report, the District recycled 69,000 tons out of 542,000 tons of garbage at both commercial and residential properties. In the report, the office of the deputy mayor for operations blamed the poor showing on the fact that 70 percent of the District’s trash comes from commercial districts that traditionally have poor recycling habits.

But after examining data from the report and subtracting commercial properties from the equation, the Observer found that only 13.5 percent of the waste from the city’s residential properties is actually recycled.

Lack of enforcement
The city is also tasked with enforcing recycling at commercial properties. On paper, the city’s requirements for commercial areas are quite stringent. Buildings must have an occupancy license, an approved recycling plan, an agreement with a recycling hauler, proof that trash and recyclables are separated, proof that bins aren’t overflowing and evidence that materials are being recycled as the law required.

Observer photo by CHRISTOPHER BEDFORD. Austin Danner of Tenleytown continues to sort his recyclables despite the fact that the District stopped recycling at his apartment. He drops off his recyclable waste at nearby businesses.

If properties don’t comply, they can be subject to fines ranging from $25, to $1,000 depending on the size and nature of the business. Office buildings handle the most paper of these properties and are subject to the strictest fines.

While all of these recourses exist on paper to keep properties in check, the city only had three inspectors in 2003 to enforce these laws, said Brenda Moorman at the D.C. Sierra Club.

Moorman reported on the club’s Web site that in 2003 the city inspected 1,046 sites, issuing 216 warnings and 41 notices of violation. Yet the total fine amount levied was only $3,100 – making the average fine approximately $76 in a year when commercial properties only recycled about 6-8 percent of its trash.

The Sierra Club had also previously settled a 12-year lawsuit with the District in 2002, alleging the city had not been following its recycling rules.

Attempts at reform
In 2004, the Department of Public Works stepped up its recycling efforts and hired more staff, tripling the number of buildings inspected and issued nine times more fines. In January 2005, when the city’s recycling contract with Waste Management Inc. expired, the city opted not to renew the contract.

Waste Management had previously provided recycling services to municipal government buildings and residential buildings.

Instead, city recycling duties transferred to the Department of Public Works. According to spokeswoman Grant, the contract wasn’t renewed “Because we [the city] can do it better.”

But since the Department took over duties it has failed to issue an annual progress report on recycling in the city as required by the city’s Recycling Act of 1988.

The progress report is mandated to include data on recycling by government and private contractors, including information on recycling at municipal buildings, which are supposed to be examples of good recycling; analysis of costs and revenues of recycling; updated outreach and education programs to increase awareness of district recycling to the public; and monitored enforcement of the city’s recycling laws.

Yet the last progress report to come out, issued by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Operations, was in 2004. No such report has been made in three years.

In 2005, the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Operations was abolished and after repeated calls to city offices, no one at the Mayor’s Office, the Environment Office or the Department of Public Works, seems to know who is now responsible for the report.

Grant said her department is “not the entity that produces the report,” and that it was likely the Office of the Environment. Calls to the Office of the Environment, which is responsible for energy conservation and air and water quality, pointed the finger at Public Works.

Despite the lack of a progress report for three years running, Grant said that after the District took over residential and city building recycling, they have found that they do, indeed, do a better job than the previous contractor.

Grant provided the Observer with data showing such improvements from 2004 to 2007. The data found that recycling had climbed to 17.1 percent in 2005, 20 percent in 2006 and then went down to 17.6 percent in 2007.

Despite the disclosure of this latest recycling data, Grant did not include data on how the figures were obtained that might affect the net result. For example, this data included the weights of composted fall leaves, which were not included in previous reports.

Based on data from BioCycle Magazine, a composting and organic recycling publication, the District’s 2004 recycling rate would place it between 37th and 38th in the nation.

According to BioCycle’s 2006 “State of Garbage in America” report, which only tracked recycling in the 50 states, the state with the best recycling rate of municipal solid waste is Oregon at 45.8 percent, followed by Minnesota at 43.2 percent and New York at 43 percent. The states with the lowest recycling rates include Mississippi at 1.6 percent, South Dakota at 3 percent and Oklahoma at 3.8 percent. BioCycle based its report on 2004 data.

Back at his Tenleytown apartment building, Austin Danner continues to separate his recyclables into boxes on the floor of his cramped kitchen hallway, which he will eventually recycle at a nearby restaurant.

“I don’t know where they’re headed,” Danner said. “But for now, this is the best I can do.”