Here is a map of the affected homes.  If you have questions, please email the head of sanitation, Mary Nix, and copy me:  mary.nix@dallascityhall.com and angela.hunt@dallascityhall.com.

To educate residents about these changes, the city is hosting several community meetings.  I hope you’ll attend and pass along this information to your neighbors:

January 11 | 6:30 p.m.
St. Thomas Aquinas Church
6306 Kenwood Street

January 12 | 6:30 p.m.
Stonewall Jackson Elementary
5828 E. Mockingbird Lane

January 16 | 10 a.m.
Samuell Grand Recreation Center
6200 E. Grand Avenue

January 21 | 6:30 p.m.
Lakewood Branch Library
6121 Worth Street

RECYCLABLE STUFF
What can be recycled? Just about everything! Think of these four primary types: PAPER, PLASTIC, METAL, and GLASS.  All of the following items may be placed (without sorting) in your blue cart or blue bags:

• Paper products — Newspapers and inserts, magazines, catalogs, telephone books, mixed office paper, mail and junk mail.
• Cardboard — Cardboard boxes, chipboard (like cereal and tissue boxes). Flatten all boxes to get more use of your cart.
• Plastic Containers — Bottles (with or without caps), jars, containers with the triangle label symbol #1, 2, 3,4, 5, 6 and 7 (please rinse!). You’ll find the plastics number in a triangle on the base of the container. If in doubt, put it in the cart – and we’ll sort it out.
• Metals — Containers made of steel, tin, and aluminum (please rinse!) Used aerosol (non-hazardous) cans are ok too. Sorry, no scrap metal pieces.
• Glass — Unbroken bottles and jars of any color (please rinse!). Lids are ok.
• Styrofoam — We’ve just added styrofoam – Food take-out containers ONLY (please rinse!)  [This info was erroneously posted on the city's website.  Styrofoam is NOT collected for recycling at this time.]

THINGS NOT RECYCLABLE

• Food waste
• Containers stained with food
• Light bulbs (see below)
• Wet paper products
• Styrofoam (see below)
• Plastic grocery bags (see below)
• Waxed paper or cardboard
• Batteries (see below)
• Electronics (see below)
• Plate glass (windows or doors)
• Coat hangers (see below)
• Yard waste (grass trimmings, branches, leaves). Please leave these items for the once monthly brush/bulky collection or consider composting!

WHAT TO DO WITH THE OTHER STUFF

• Styrofoam — The City of Dallas can only recycle rinsed Styrofoam food containers. Packaging “peanuts” and other Styrofoam materials should be taken to parcel or shipping businesses for recycling. These can also be thrown into your regular garbage roll cart for disposal.  [Styrofoam may NOT be recycled at this time.]
• Electronics — The City conducts free E-Waste recycling collection events four (4) times a year. The dates and locations can be found on our website. E-Waste is also accepted during regular operating hours at the Home Chemical Collection Center (HC3) located at 11234 Plano Road.
• Batteries — Alkaline batteries may be placed in your garbage container. Rechargeable batteries may be taken to various retailers such as Radio Shack, Lowe’s and Home Depot for recycling.
• Metal Coat Hangers — Currently, the City does not accept coat hangers for recycling. Some local dry cleaners will recycle them. Or bring them to the City’s free quarterly recycling roundups. The dates and locations can be found on our website.
• Plastic Grocery Bags — The film plastic used for grocery bags and newspaper sleeves (among many other uses) is not recyclable by our processor at this time. However, many grocery stores will take back your grocery bags or you can reuse them yourself. We hope to add this to our list of recyclables in the future.
• Christmas Trees — Starting December 26, the City of Dallas will accept live, green, or flocked trees from residents for recycling. Beginning January 2, the mulch from recycled trees will be available at select locations. Call 3-1-1 for information regarding tree drop off locations, and where free mulch will be available.

Items that can be taken to the Home Chemical Collection Center at 11234 Plano Road (see website for details):

• E-Waste Items: Computer equipment (hard-drives, monitors, mouse, modems, printers, etc), televisions and cell phones.
• Paint: Both water-based (Latex) and oil-based paint
• Light Bulbs: All types can be taken at the Center. Compact Florescent Light Bulbs (CFLs): If you elect to dispose of these, please place the CFL bulb into two plastic bags and tie them to seal before putting in the garbage cart. For standard incandescent bulbs, please place in plastic bag for safer handling, and then into regular garbage.
• Hazardous Waste Material: such as chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, cleaners, polishers, etc.

If you live west of Central Expressway in District 14, your trash and recycling pick up is going to change.

Starting Feb. 1, the city is beginning phase 2 of its once-a-week trash and recycling service. You will put out your trash and recycling once a week for pick-up. Pick-up for both is on the same day of the week. You can see your pick-up day on the map.

Once-a-week pick-up saves on fuel, and we saw a dramatic rise in recycling and reduction of trash (which lengthens the life of our landfill) during phase 1 in North Dallas.

Phase 3 of the once-a-week trash will include the eastern part of District 14. That is scheduled to begin in Feb. 2010, but I’m trying to get that moved up. To do it sooner, Districts 9, 10, and 14 have to all agree (since it’s done as a group).

You can also visit the city’s recycling website for more info.

In researching Lubeck, Germany, I discovered that they have a mechanical biological treatment plant that consists of mechanical sorting and anaerobic digestion — a fancy way of saying they divert tons of trash from their landfill by recycling it or reusing it in various ways.

At first I thought “recycling” meant that they pulled out all the recyclable paper, plastic, glass, etc. from the trash as it came to the facility. Nope. Those recyclables never make it to this plant — they’re separated at the household level and taken to other recycling facilities. (Quick sidenote: Our single stream recycling is really cutting edge. They don’t have that here — everyone has to sort. More of us should take advantage of our incredibly easy and lazy-proof system.)

Also, the city also picks up composting waste separately (that’s basically anything that was once living — meat, produce, garden plants, etc.). The composting is done at a separate part of this facility.

So there, they haul in the trash — all the stuff that’s not recyclable or compost — and basically chop it up into pieces to prepare it for the next steps.

I’ll explain the whole proecess in my next blog entry, plus — wait for it — I’ve got some video to share. We’ve got a full day ahead over here, so I’ve got to run for now, but I’ll post part zwei later today or in the morning.

Many residents contacted me to indicate they would like to use the blue bins. I’ve worked hard with our Sanitation Department to figure out a way to do this, so we mailed ballots to residents in the manual pick up areas to see if they wanted to switch to blue bins picked up at the curb.

The votes are in, and all but one neighborhood decided to switch to the Big Blue recycling roll carts at the curb every other week. The change in service will start August 1st . See the map below to see if your neighborhood will be changing to blue bin recycling as of August 1st:

(Click image to enlarge)

Starting August 1st, the City’s Sanitation Services Department will collect your recyclables every-other-week – right at your curbside. Just wheel your cart or carry your blue bags to the curb by 7:00 a.m. on the collection day. No worries about which day

The second phase of Dallas’ new recycling program has begun. New, blue recycling bins were distributed to residents, and if you haven’t gotten yours, you can call 311 to request a bin. Remember, recycling is now “single-stream,” meaning you can pile all your paper, glass, metal, and plastic (all but #6) into one container.

Residents (including my home) who have alley pick up are NOT eligible at this time to use the blue bins. Because our alleys are narrow, we have to have small recycling trucks pick up our recycling and do manual pick up instead of automatic. Some folks who have alley pick up were delivered a blue bin in error. The city will come by and pick up your blue bin (you can even fill it up with recycling).

I’ve gotten tons of emails from people expressing their new found love of their blue bins, and their frustration with having to give it up because they have alley pick up. We have hopefully come up with a couple of possible solutions: First, the Sanitation Department is going to design a process so that streets that want to convert to street pick up for trash and recycling can do so. They don’t know what the process will be at this point, and because they’re in the middle of getting the new recycling program up and running, it’ll take a few months for them to get focussed on creating an alley-to-curb pick up process. But it’s in the works.

Second, I talked with the head of Sanitation yesterday, and proposed that we try a pilot alley recycling program using the blue bins. I went out to meet with the recycling guys when they picked up recycling from my home last week, and it looks to me like it might be possible to use the bins in the alleys. It may depend on the alleys and how much room there is for bins and the trucks to navigate, but it’s worth a try. The pilot program will take a few months, but hopefully this could be a solution.