The current generation of MSW has a recycling rate of 21%, and Indianapolis is no exception. Unfortunately, only 7% of the city's garbage is recycled each year. According to The Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis is the largest city in the country without a universal sidewalk recycling program. It's no surprise that the city's recycling rates are low, even among participants in a voluntary program. In order to meet the recycling objective, 2.7 million tons need to be diverted from landfills.
To achieve this, Indianapolis needs to implement a universal sidewalk recycling program as soon as possible. This will help reduce waste going into landfills and create jobs in the process. The city should also consider increasing rates for waste disposal while decreasing rates for recycling. Robinson says Indianapolis hopes to implement a citywide sidewalk recycling program by 2025 and sees an urgent need to do so. Some cities charge more than Indianapolis for providing their recycling and waste disposal services, Bennett said.
Some say the legislation was intended to help the county improve its lagging position on recycling, which has been among the lowest in the country in terms of cities of its size. Recycling is no longer considered a service for the best cities, said Allyson Mitchell, executive director of the Indiana Recycling Coalition. In Baltimore, the city's public works director says that recycling costs have risen 191% compared to the previous year and that increasing the recycling rate will be more difficult now that China has banned the import of foreign recyclable materials. Many cities that adopted recycling achieved recycling rates of 40 percent or more by charging residents more for throwing away trash and less for recycling. And only two of the top 50 cities, Detroit and New Orleans, recycle slightly less than Indianapolis. In fact, the taboo of raising rates was so strong that municipal politicians not only failed to implement a viable recycling program, but they also refused to increase the rate of solid waste for more than 30 years. He said that a universal recycling program is a prerequisite before Indianapolis can be considered a world-class city and that he has a lot of work to do to achieve that.
In the meantime, he said he was happy that the companies that won the grants are using them to divert waste from landfills in other ways, such as recycling electronic products and black plastics. While Indianapolis has yet to deal with the fall in the market value of recycled materials due to the ban imposed by China, the city can take advantage of the higher-than-average rates offered by state manufacturers, according to Mitchell. Observers say that those districts effectively eliminated politics from recycling decisions and that more than 100 cities and towns across the state adopted recycling. To increase recycling rates, Indianapolis needs to take action now and implement a universal sidewalk recycling program as soon as possible.
