ST. LOUIS — Just a few months after the City of St. Louis ended alley recycling because of rising costs and high contamination rates, officials say the new drop-off system is resulting in cleaner materials and significantly lower costs, even while the overall volume of trash they’re handling remains the same as before.
Mayor Cara Spencer announced in August that the city would end alley recycling, calling it ‘ineffective” and overall too expensive to maintain. Many people reported that their dumpsters were overflowing, and the city’s cleanup crews had struggled to keep up with both trash and recycling routes.
“St. Louisans deserve better than having trash overflowing behind their homes, and they deserve a government that is honest about what it can deliver,” Spencer said in a news release. “By making these changes, we end the costly and ineffective effort that alley recycling had become, despite the good intentions, and we improve our ability to collect trash, which is one of the basic and most crucial services our City is tasked with delivering.”…