For the past four or five years, many of our residents have asked for Single-stream Recycling rather than the Dual-stream Recycling that we have had since the mid 1990's. And the Strategic Partnership Agreement with the City of Austin required AMLD to institute Single-stream recycling when we renewed our Trash Collection Contract. The District has just renewed the contract with Allied Waste Services and we have gotten single-stream recycling and a significant reduction in the overall cost for service.

Single-stream recycling is an easier way to recycle for the consumer and the Trash service, because everything is thrown into one 96 gallon recycling cart, and then when the truck picks the materials up, it is all dumped into the trash truck without being sorted into separte bins. The recycled materials are then taken to a special recycling center where it is sorted mechanically on a large processing line, and then each type of material - glass, aluminum cans, steel cans, all the various types of plastic, paper, or cardboard is then bailed and sent to manufacturers that reuse the materials. The old Dual-stream recycling sorted all the materials by hand which was time consuming, expensive and at times dangerous for the workers. This was the reason that glass was not picked up before - it was hazardous and there was not much of a market for recycled glass.

HOW IT WILL WORK:

Every home with service now has a 96 gallon cart for trash and an 18 gallon tub for recycling. During the week of January 14th, Allied will follow the recycling truck on each normal pick up day and as the 18 gallon tub is emptied, it will be picked up and replaced with another 96 gallon Recycle Cart. This cart will have a GREEN lid which says RECYCLE on it. The regular trash carts will be emptied as usual, on the usual pickup days.

Then starting on the week of January 21, 2013, on your normal pick up days, you will place your trash cart out at the curb, AND YOU WILL PLACE THE RECYCLE CART OUT AT THE CURB AS WELL. Allied will have a trash truck drive around to empty the trash carts as usual (plus, up to two additional items of trash). They will also have a Recycle truck which will come around and empty the single stream recycle carts. IMPORTANT: The recycling carts will only be picked EVERY OTHER WEEK. The trash carts will continue to be picked up weekly. Shortly, a calendar for 2013 will be provided that will show which weeks are RECYCLE WEEKS.

This program all ties in with the City of Austin's goal to reduce the amount of trash that goes into landfills by 80% by the year 2030 - the rest will be recycled. This is a similar goal to that of most cities in the United States and really, the world.

The trash service is different, and will take some getting used to by all of us. Many cities and other MUD's and Limited Districts have gone over to single-stream in the past couple of years and generally, it has had very positive reviews.