Dive Brief:
- New Orleans will start accepting glass in its recycling collections for the first time in a decade.
- Sanitation Director Cynthia Sylvain-Lear said that services will be reinstated in the French Quarter and Central Business District in the spring.
- Recycling services overall been recently reintroduced after a long hiatus prompted by Hurricane Katrina, which swept through the city in 2005 and devastated the region.
Dive Insight:
The city renegotiated its main waste contracts in 2010, but glass was too expensive and wasn’t included in the collection. At the start of 2015, a new hauler was selected to handle the services—Empire Janitorial Sales & Services. Empire offered to add glass to its weekly recycling collection and charge the city $3.50 per month for each business or household it served.