Houston Recycling Hot Spots

HOUSTON - As recycling gets more convenient, more people participate ,and the City of Houston has a good formula for success. The city's Westpark Consumer Recycling Center is a drive-through location where residents don't even need to get out of their cars.

"They can stay in their car, pop their truck or open the door, and we'll carry it out for you," says Ed Zilton, with Houston's Solid Waste Management Department.

Visitors to the site at 5900 Westpark either don't have curbside recycling, or may have an overflow of recycled goods. This location also takes some of the non-standard items, such as motor oil, tires off of the rim, Styrofoam blocks, even TVs and computers.

Some of the household items Westpark won't accept can be dropped off the city's Environmental Service Centers, which are considered hazardous waste facilities.

Manager Marilyn Leday says there are two locations for city of Houston residents, 5614 Neches Street to the North, and 11500 South Post Oak Boulevard to the South.

"Basically our objective here is to remove as much from the landfill as possible, break it down into commodities, and then get a revenue from it," Leday says.

These locations accept small appliances, florescent bulbs, lead acid batteries, and fire extinguishers, among other things, but most of what they take in are paint products and household chemicals. The location on South Post Oak then turns around and gives re-usable items away.

"Every Friday we have a 'take-back day' from 9am to 12pm when citizens can come and get paint that we have available, as well as any chemicals that are still reusable," Leday says. "We give it away free of charge."

Convenience is also the goal for Waste Management, one of Houston's largest haulers of trash and recycling. It prides itself on efficient "single-stream" recycling. Residents mix all the recycled items into one bin, then Waste Management's technology takes over.

"You've got optical sorters. You've got belts moving at about 500 feet per minute," says site manager Paul Ware, describing the layout at the Waste Management processing center in Southwest Houston. "These optical sorters are able to read the commodity coming across, and you can program these sorters to do multiple things."

A certain amount of manpower is required to work the sorting line, but not much. WM's sorting technology is so advanced we weren't allowed to shoot video of some of their equipment. Processing the milk jugs, water bottles, tin and metal cans, and plastic bags is a competitive business.

One major item that Waste Management does not accept for recycling is Styrofoam.

"Those are things that we unfortunately have to send to a landfill," says Ware. "That's something we don't want to do, because here we try to recycle everything. If it can be 100%, that's what we're going to shoot for."

Waste Management also operates the Atascocita landfill where it also strives for efficiency. For what's most frequently referred to as a dump, it looks pretty neat and tidy.

"We have a very organized system when we're filling the land fill operations," manager Gordon Spradley tells us in a behind-the-scene tour.

Spradley says they use space as best they can, and they use the landfill bi-product, methane, the best they can, too.

"As the waste stream degrades it produces landfill gas," explains Spradley. "We collect that gas in a series of gas extraction wells."

Spradley says there are are more than two miles of pipe running under and through the landfill. The methane flows into its on-site waste energy plant.

"We generate 10 megawatts of electricity with the gas that is produced in this landfill," says Spradley. "It provides enough power for 5,000 to 6,000 homes around this landfill."

But you can look around the landfill and see many items that didn't have to end up there. Cardboard boxes in particular are everywhere.

"It would be nice if people could get more involved. Try to recycle more of the products that come into the house," says Spradley. "All the boxing materials, the plastics and cans. A lot of things come into the waste stream that could be recycled."

Both Waste Management and the City of Houston are trying to make that easier to do.