Mayor Phil Bredesen has been a consistent skeptic about the cost-effectiveness and general efficiency of offering curbside recycling to Nashvillians.
But recycling boosters who care more about the benefits that curbside recycling offers to Nashville’s civic psychology than the business sense it makes on a spreadsheet may have reason for hope. The mayor is considering the expansion of Metro’s curbside recycling program to all of the urban services district.
A special Metro Council committee recently proposed that the city’s curbside recycling program be expanded to include all 125,000 households within the city’s more densely populated areas. As it stands, only about 75,000 Nashville households—some in the urban services district and some in the general services district—are offered curbside recycling.
Given the mayor’s longstanding circumspection on the issue and the undeniably poor participation and return rates, there was reason to wonder if the mayor would support more recycling. Now, Metro Council members and city officials say, Bredesen is about a week away from unveiling what may be his final proposal in the area of solid waste. And, they say, he appears poised to support more recycling.
The mayor’s office is waiting for information from the public works department about the cost of offering blue-bag recycling to the 125,000 households and the cost for the city’s own trucks to collect it.
One possible explanation for the mayor’s apparent about-face: Expanding curbside with a new blue-bag system run by public works would be much less expensive for the city than expansion of the existing bin system using commercial haulers. The savings may be significant enough that Bredesen is willing to toss a bone to ardent recycling supporters.
“It’s basically a popular thing to do,” one observer notes. “Those who want it will be happy, and those who don’t care won’t care.”
