When the city of Cleveland relaunched residential recycling last summer, it did so with a revamp that included an opt-in to participate and a heavy dose of education to keep the program from avoiding the pitfalls that torpedoed earlier efforts. For two years, the city had abandoned curbside collection after the global market for recyclables tanked and costs skyrocketed, partially due to extreme contamination in the materials it was picking up around the city — more than half of what residents were putting in the blue bins couldn’t be recycled.
The city in 2022 signed a new contract with Rumpke to restart services and, to address the contamination problem, limited collection to those who signed up, who received helpful guides on what could and could not be recycled. Eight months later, there’s good news.
Not only has the number of participating households doubled from the initial opt-ins last summer, now totaling 70,000, but residents are largely following the rules. “A couple of years ago when we lost the recycling program, we were up above 60 percent contamination rate,” said Recycling Coordinator Ren Brumfield. “Of what was sent in for recycling, over 60 percent of that was trash. So now we’re at 15%. We’re so much better than we used to be.”