Saint-Louis should consider “voluntary” recycling

ST. LOUIS — Alderwoman Cara Spencer, a candidate for mayor, suggested Tuesday that the city should change the way it handles recycling for residents.

Spencer told people at a Boulevard Heights neighborhood meeting that the current approach isn’t working: Only about a third of what goes into recycling bins has been processed in recent years. The rest, littered with plastic bags, food waste and other rubbish, went to the landfill.

Meanwhile, processors began charging more to process recycling, leaving the city with less money to pay for trash pickup, which has been inconsistent in recent years due to staffing shortages.

Spencer suggested the city adopt a system that allows people who really want to recycle to do so and focus on picking up trash for everyone else.

She said such an “opt-in” system could allow recyclers to take materials to one of the city’s drop-off sites instead of letting truck drivers collect them from alley trash bins. The city did something similar in 2021 and 2022, when staffing shortages threatened its ability to pick up trash, and waste division officials said the recycling they got was cleaner.

“It’s not my preferred solution,” Spencer said, “but the reality is what we’re doing now isn’t working.”

Conner Kerrigan, a spokesperson for Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, declined to comment directly on Spencer’s remarks.

Jones ignored similar calls from aldermen after reintroducing recycling in late spring 2022. The extra work combined with truck problems and a seasonal increase in demand overwhelmed the trash department, leaving dumpsters untouched and overflowing for weeks. Crews started working seven days a week to catch up, and they still are.

Kerrigan noted that the city recently partnered with Saint Louis University on a project to install sensors in driveway dumpsters to measure their contents and track where recycling ends up. Kerrigan said the idea is to figure out where things are going wrong and figure out how officials can help.

“We want more things to be recycled, but these contaminated trash cans cause so many problems,” he said. “People at all levels need to be more aware of this.”