staff has designed highly successful municipal recycling and waste reduction programs for both residential and commercial clients, and large industrial complexes.

These systems include residential curb-side or household collection of co-mingled or segregated recyclables and separate containers for high volume commercial generators.

While the situation may vary from City to City worldwide, the advantages of a co-mingled or “Blue Bag System” for residential MSW are highlighted below –

1. The Blue Bag system enjoys the highest participation rate of any type of recycling program (~ 75 % or greater).
2. Does not require new or specialized equipment.
3. Collected on same routes as regular trash, so Blue Bags do not require separate collection routes.
4. No increase in manpower for collection and transportation.
5. Very low cost to implement – program can be implemented very quickly.
6. Quality of recyclables improves because they are not in contact with regular trash.
7. Quality of compost improves because impurities are removed from waste stream.

An example of potential revenues from recyclables from the Gulf Region is illustrated below –

• Ferrous Metals – $60 to $90 per ton.
• Cardboard – $60 to $100 per ton.
• Paper – $40 to $70 per ton
• HDPE – $100 to $300 per ton.
• PET – $100 to $350 per ton.
• LDPE – $0 – $30 per ton.
• Miscellaneous Plastic – $0 to $19 per ton.
• Wood – $5.5 to $11 per ton.
• Aluminum – $400 to $750.
• Miscellaneous Metals    – $60 to $100 per ton.
• Glass – $0 to $33 per ton.

The above prices are subject to change and driven by market demand and are provided here to solely to illustrate the potential for recycling.

Perhaps more importantly – recyclables removed from the waste stream help to conserve valuable landfill disposal capacity – thereby increasing the available disposal capacity for a municipality, and in the long term reducing landfill operating costs.