Dive summary:
- The D.C. Department of Public Works Director, Bill Howland, spoke yesterday at a D.C. Council committee hearing to convince city officials to shrink down city trash bins and enlarge city recycling bins, a project that is estimated to cost approximately $10 million.
- Normal trash bins for houses in D.C. are called Supercans and are a whopping 96-gallons, while recycling bins are only 32-gallons.
- Howland’s proposal is to double, or possibly even triple the size of household recycling bins while the garbage cans could shrink by a lesser amount.
From the article:
In 2012, D.C. collected 96,444 tons of household waste and 26,468 tons of recycling. Some environmental advocates have said that if recycling cans are made bigger, residents will be more likely to use them. According to DPW, D.C.’s residential recycling diversion rate—the ratio of how much is recycled relative to how much total garbage is produced—stood at 25.81 percent in 2012, a four percent increase from the two years prior. ...