Houston: The City That Resists Recycling

While most large American cities have started ambitious recycling programs that have sharply reduced the amount of trash bound for landfills, Houston has not.

The city's shimmering skyline may wear the label of the world's energy capital, but deep in Houston's Dumpsters lies a less glamorous superlative: It is the worst recycler among the United States' 30 largest cities.

Houston recycles just 2.6 percent of its total waste, according to a study this year by Waste News, a trade magazine. By comparison, San Francisco and New York recycle 69 percent and 34 percent of their waste respectively. Moreover, 25,000 Houston residents have been waiting as long as 10 years to get recycling bins from the city.

Environmental advocates are pleading for municipal intervention. And some small improvements -- an organic waste program, for one -- are expected soon.

But city officials say real progress will be hard to come by. Landfill costs here are cheap. The city's sprawling, no-zoning layout makes collection expensive, and there is little public support for the kind of effort it takes to sort glass, paper and plastics. And there appears to be even less for placing fees on excess trash.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[TimmySlagle]

Good for Houston.

It's nice to know that there's at least one city in America, smart enough to see through the fraud of recycling.

Recycling uses more energy, and wastes more resources than just throwing everything in a landfill.

But it makes people FEEL better, and sometimes, that's all that is important.

[ohiomark]

Liberalism should never be judged by it's results, only it's intentions.

[TimmySlagle]

Yeah, recycling is almost a Sacrament to Liberals.

[Agent420]

Maybe we could give Texas back to the Mexicans.

[ashabot]

Texas is a mess.

[DavidMG]

Miamihas little to no recycling.

[danoj]

If they want to live in filth let them I say.

[ceindependence]

Gee, to bad Houston is not as enlightened and progressive as we at HuffPo. I wish everyone was as elite as us! I feel just warm and fuzzy knowing how much better people we are than those stupid, dirty Texans.

[truthbrigade]

Goober Nation Rejoyce!!

[jumperpin]

Me, too.

[Maloysius]

You might be funny if you could learn how to spell.

[Blurp]

You said it, not me.

[MajorKong]

Texas is a very nice state. Unfortunately it's full of Texans.

[naturallight]

Residents of the City of Austin have paid for recycling that does not happen. They have sorted their plastic bottles for 10 years and at the recycle facility the plastic bottles are put in a dump truck and driven to the landfill.

I wish this were not the case. It made a lot of wealthy people "feel good" while at the same time accomplishing absolutely nothing.

[Egalitare]

And not just Austin. REAL Plastic recycling has to become a national priority.

[TimmySlagle]

This is what happens with most "recycling." People would be shocked if they learned how much of the garbage they washed and sorted ends up in the landfill anyway.

There isn't much of a market for recycled goods, Aluminum is really the only thing with any value.

[watchingthings]

Ahh Huston! The beautiful city.....the city China has modelled it's cities after.

[LudwigVan]

Well this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone the least bit informed about Houston and Texas (except Austin and, increasingly, Dallas). Harris County, with more incarcerated persons than any other county in America, the former home district of Tom DeLay, former home of Enron, and one of the homes of the Bush family. Houston, which briefly surpassed Los Angeles as the US city with the worst air pollution (LA, remember, has the disadvantage of being closed in by mountains; Houston is all flat). Houston has long had some of the worst crime rates in the country and that's with the "Texas tough" mentality in the HPD and city government.

And try to drive on I-610 on the east side near the Houston Ship Channel and the suburb of Pasadena (aka "Stinkadena") without throwing up. The summer heat and humidity doesn't help much either.

[clevelandtocali]

I suppose life is all peachy where you live?

[JScott]

Not surprising. I was there recently and there's nothing that sez wow, and with no zoning, I saw auto repair garages right next to homes and people adding crappy additions to the front of their houses and that bit about Texas having the lowest population density and when you realize that except for the western part of the state around Big Bend there is NO big tracts of wilderness at all in Texas everyplace else in Texas has a print of human kind on it.

[Blurp]

My brother-in-law sells raw plastics and lives in Houston. Recycling, according to him, would put him out of a job. Throw it away and buy new!

[ramal]

This is a surpise? Anyone who has ever been to Houston can easily attest to what many of its residents say jokingly: "The only thing serparating Houston and hell is a screen door."

[dadw5boys]

There is a real good oppurnity here for a business. Mine the Houston Dumps. Imagine the amount of can, steel, copper, tin, and even methane gas to run a power station one of thier huge dumps will bring.

[jas1984]

Im sure they do, in brownsville where I live they like to burn off the dump to get to the excess materials

[darthdarcy]

Texas is the most polluted State in our Union...

Houston is a terrible place nearly as bad a Dallas...

[castlerider]

Houston IS a joke. I live here, born and raised here, love the people, not so much the place, but the prime reason for my frustrations is the inherit ignorance this poor place has been inflicted with, and it's primarily GREED.
Houston lays mostly in Harris County, the largest and most sprawling flat land county in the world.
Going across town can take half a day in traffic.
In the 50's, then 60's, some smart people came up with the smart idea of a local light rail to serve the sprawling distances, but was shut down quick by the wealthy landowners, mostly oil people. "Oh no! we're building you FREEWAYS so you can drive your CAR!!, AND, we have all the gas you need, MM-hhmm!!"
Recently, a light rail in the downtown area finally made it through after about 15 years of being voted for at least 3 times, winning everytime. ridiculous. For years, it was like "That rail line? we voted YES to it 10 years ago!!." Guess who did everything in his power to derail the start until he couldn't anymore?? You guessed it- good ol' Tom Delay!! in oil's pockets, of course!

As far as the recycling, they leave the sorting out of materials, glass, plastic, done BY HAND!! If they would invest in a mega auto sorter like Frisco has, it would mean millions for the city's infrastructure, of course, our leaders here are too busy religiously jumping over dollars to get to nickels.

[gladiatorpodolsky]

Hooray Houston!

[Chuckwheat]

Local motto: "Houston Proud"
of what?

[Anastasia]

They are proud of being dinosaurs. By remaining in denial, they can claim to be the last bastion of mid-twentieth America.

[mjt218]

The last bastion? Unfortunately, I think Houston is indicative of the majority of America, maybe just a bit on the extreme side.

I will say, that I've never seen so much concrete in my life as I saw in Houston (they even put a lot of architectural design emphasis into the interstates, lots of lone stars and texas flags built right into the high rise supports).