COLUMBIA -- Columbia City Council Members approved an experimental program that could help increase recycling.
The program replaces the city’s blue bag program with recycling bins.
About 1,900 households in north Columbia neighborhoods will soon say goodbye to blue recycle bags and hello to recycle bins for the next year. People in Columbia who get their garbage picked up on Fridays will take part in the experimental program.
The blue bins hold glass, metal and plastic items. The green bins are for paper and cardboard items. City officials want to see if people recycle more with bins or bags.
“We hope that this will make it easier for people to have another method for recycling," Columbia public works spokeswoman Jill Stedem said. "Maybe they don’t want to get the bags, or they don’t want to mess with the bags, or they feel the bags are dirtier to mess with.”
Holes on the bottom of the 18-gallon bins allow for drainage that keeps materials dryer and cleaner than in blue bags. The types of materials accepted for recycling will not change. The only thing that will change is the method of collection.
City officials want to see if they have the right type of recycle bins. Do they need bigger ones or smaller ones? Do they need ones with lids? They hope to answer those questions by gathering data over the next year.
“We’re really going to rely on the neighborhood associations to give us some feedback on their thoughts on how the program works, if they see anything different that we need to do, or if it seems to be working better and more people are recycling,” Stedem said.
Most of the money for this project comes from a $22,000 grant from the Mid-Missouri Solid Waste Management District. If the program works well in the experimental areas, city officials want to use bins instead of bags throughout the entire city.
Columbia city leaders said the ultimate goal behind their recycling program is to reduce the amount of garbage in their city landfill.
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