At New Earth’s composting site off Interstate 10 on the far East Side, it is easy to pick out the pile generated by the city’s pilot composting program. No other heap has bright bits of plastic strewn like confetti throughout its mix.
“It’s evil,” company President Clayton Leonard said of the shredded Whataburger cups and H-E-B bags. “We don’t want that.”
A portion of the waste coming to New Earth is from the city’s new curbside collection service for organic material, the latest endeavor to reuse more and throw out less. But it is running into some of the same problems the city has encountered with more conventional recyclables such as plastics and glass: Too many residents don’t understand how to properly sort their garbage or don’t want to bother.
“Our residents are slowly getting it,” city Solid Waste Department Director David W. McCary said.
The organic waste program is being tested at more than 25,000 households, concentrated in four sections of the city. This week, the city will have distributed the last of the wheeled green carts for the test program for the exclusive disposal of organic waste — anything from chicken bones to grass clippings.
The hope is that tons of organic material will be collected by the city and sent to New Earth for processing into salable compost. In turn, the city will spend less on dumping waste in the landfill.
The start of the composting program couldn’t be better timed since the winter holidays are a peak time for food waste.
But for it to succeed on a large scale, residents will have to learn to keep plastics and glass out of the green composting cart. Otherwise, Leonard said, New Earth can’t sell the finished compost and make it worth its while.
Another company that hopes to turn trash into cash is Logistix Recycling, which recently opened its first plant in San Antonio.
The director of recycling at Logistix, Zachery Walter, is giving tours of the 98,000-square-foot warehouse on Hormel Drive near Splashtown where waste is prepared for reuse. He believes that if people see garbage being recycled, instead of buried in a landfill, they become quick converts.
By Colin McDonald