SOLID WASTE/County’s waste agency helps hotels recycle
Onondaga County, N.Y., is committed to recycling. The county started its mandatory recycling program in 1990 after passing a law prohibiting the disposal of recyclables with trash. No one – homeowner, businessperson or motel guest – is exempt. However, getting the latter to participate in a recycling program has not always been easy.
Because motels and hotels generate nearly 5,000 tons of trash a year in Onondaga County, officials believed a recycling program aimed specifically at the hospitality industry would put a serious dent in the county’s waste stream. So, over the past summer, the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency (OCRRA) began providing collection bins along with instructions to 25 local motels and hotels. OCRRA’s business recycling consultant, Jim Carroll, hopes to persuade all the motels and hotels in the agency’s service area to join the program.
The agency is providing 13-quart and 28-quart containers that are marked with an arrow and proclaim “We recycle.” The hotels leave recycling instructions in guest rooms. The bins are free to the hotels, as is the education that OCRRA provides to hotel staff. The hotels and motels now are recycling corrugated cardboard, glass, metal containers, plastic and paper. Paper, especially newsprint, comprises 35 percent of the trash discarded every year by hotels and motels. Consequently, the agency has expanded its paper recycling list to include magazines, catalogs, flyers and envelopes.
The project is the latest aspect of OCRRA’s Operation Separation, designed to expand recycling in the county, which already has one of the nation’s best recycling rates, diverting 65 percent of its waste. The county’s diversion program received the Washington, D.C.-based National Recycling Coalition’s 1998 award as the best urban community recycling program.
According to Suzanne LaLonde, OCRRA’s director of recycling and waste reduction, most hotels have been eager to participate in the program, since recycling saves the hotels in disposal costs. For example, management at the Sheraton University Hotel and Conference Center in Syracuse, which has had a recycling program for four years, estimate the hotel saves between $300 and $500 a month in disposal costs because of its recycling program. For more information on the program, contact LaLonde at (315) 453-2866.
