St. Louis City expands its drop-off recycling program

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) — It’s been one year since St. Louis City moved from alley recycling to drop-off locations.

The city started off with 25 drop-off locations and now has 46. The goal is to have a drop-off site within a mile of every resident’s home.

Every site gets the recycling picked up at least twice a week.

Barb Blaes drops her recycling off at the site on Sublette near Arsenal.

“Because I’m committed to recycling and my family is committed to recycling, it’s been fine. I just make it a stop on my way to the grocery store,” Blaes said.

The Sublette drop-off site is one of the busiest in the city and gets recycling picked up six times a week.

Although it’s not as convenient as the one in the alley behind her house, Blaes said people weren’t using the blue dumpsters correctly.

“There are many people that come into the city to use our dumpsters and so oftentimes there was a lot of contamination,” Blaes said.

The city’s chief operating officer Ben Jonsson said the city is actually able to recycle more now.

“More than half of that recycled material put in the blue dumpsters in the alleys was actually ending up in a landfill because it was so contaminated,” Jonsson said.

76% of what is going into blue dumpsters at drop-off sites is actually getting recycled now, according to Jonsson.

Jonsson said within the first six months of moving from alley recycling to drop-off recycling the city and taxpayers have saved about $450,000.

The money saved goes back to the refuse division’s budget, allowing the money to go towards maintenance and repairs.

“In the refuse division overall we are struggling to maintain the number of trucks right now,” Jonsson said.

The blue dumpsters that are still sitting in the alleys can now be used for trash.

“We actually had a lot of overflowing trash and one of the reasons we had so much contamination in the blue dumpsters is because the brown dumpsters were filling up,” Jonsson said.

The city launched a survey to hear from residents about recycling. The survey is open through August 31.

You can track how often the refuse division is picking up recycling through CityStat.

City leaders are also doing a roll cart study, which is set to be finished within the next month, to see how it would work across the city and how much it would cost.