For years, when city of St. Louis residents put recycling in an alley blue bin, it has been pretty much a coin flip if that material gets recycled or not.
That’s because the material in those bins was so contaminated with nonrecyclable trash, when it arrived at Republic Services, it was as often as not sent to the recycling facility as the landfill. The city’s rejection rate has hovered around 50 percent, says Ben Jonsson, the city’s chief operating officer.
Jonsson unveiled a new recycling plan yesterday to the Aldermanic Public Utilities and Infrastructure committee. It would see alley recycling done away with in order to devote those resources to better trash pickup across the city. The 80 percent of city residents who used to have alley recycling will now have to take their recyclables to community drop sites…