A s we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the state’s milestone Mandatory Recycling Act this year, it is time to re-energize the recycling movement in New Jersey and go for the green. Recycling offers environmental benefits and dollars for municipal coffers — a real green win-win if there ever was one for our state.
Over the past 25 years, recycling has become second nature to many New Jersey residents and businesses.
Containers bearing the familiar recycling logo filled with bottles and cans, and bundles of magazines, newspapers and cardboard, placed at curbsides in neighborhoods across the state are part of the Jersey landscape.
State residents in large numbers have embraced recycling for its environmental benefits.
In 2010 we saw an encouraging increase in New Jersey’s recycling rate (recyclables that are not trashed or burned) — up from 37 percent in 2009 to 40 percent for municipal solid waste. But there is still plenty of room for improvement.
Even after 25 years of mandatory recycling and technological advances that make recycling convenient and cost-effective, we are still missing out on financial opportunities by not doing enough to reach our 50 percent statewide recycling goal.
Many cities and towns are still not capturing the full economic benefits of recycling.
A key component to the Christie Administration’s strategy for solid-waste disposal is to recycle more materials, not to bury and burn them. So we intend to once again kick-start the recycling movement in New Jersey; to get people and businesses and institutions who still have not embraced recycling to understand the benefits recycling brings to the environment and their communities.
Everyone has a role to play: the pizza shop in the strip mall, the small business in an office complex, the middle school in your town, and right down to the individual at his or her office or home work station.
To date, a third of New Jersey’s municipalities recycle less than 25 percent of their municipal trash. Only 16 percent have reached the mandatory 50 percent recycling rate.
Running an effective recycling program has a cost for municipalities, including recycling infrastructure, personnel, training, and recycling collections.
However, the economics of recycling vs. disposal demonstrates that recycling provides a net economic benefit to cities and towns that are diligent about recycling.
Our jump in recycling rates from 2009 to 2010 added up to real dollars for local and county government coffers.
The extra 364,000 tons of paper, cardboard, glass, plastic and other materials recycled in 2010, instead of going to landfills or incinerators, equated to $26 million in savings from avoided solid waste disposal costs, plus $45.5 million in revenues from sales of recycled materials.
Bob Martin is the commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.