Waste Management: Expanded recycling needs new facilities

An initiative by the Incline Village General Improvement District and Houston-based trash hauler Waste

Management to make recycling easier for North Lake Tahoe residents will require significant infrastructure and investment before it can be expanded to the rest of Washoe County.

But Waste Management says it hopes to bring the improved program to the Reno area by 2009.

The single-stream recycling initiative does away with multiple recycling bins in an effort to spur consumer recycling.

In Incline Village, Waste Management employees rather than its customers will sort recyclables. The Reno-

Tahoe area currently lacks the proper equipment and facilities for such an operation, Communications

Manager Justin Caporusso says.

In the Truckee Meadows, recyclables are pre-sorted by customers and hauled to Waste Management's Materials Recycling Facilities on Commercial Row in Reno and Greg Street in Sparks. Caporusso says the area requires a larger, centralized facility.

"If the logistics and cost could be worked out on all fronts, we would like to keep the processing local," he says. "At this time our local Materials Recycling Facilities are not large enough to handle the amount of equipment that would be involved in the single-stream process. However, there is always a possibility of getting a larger building or adding on to ours."

Last summer a single-stream pilot program initiated in one North Lake Tahoe neighborhood realized an increase in the amount of recyclable material diverted out of the trash stream to 18 percent from historic levels of 3 percent.

"It's better for municipalities and for the environment because the participation increases," Caporusso says.

The Incline Village program is one of the first municipal single-stream recycling programs launched in Nevada, Waste Management says.