Orange County NC Website
Browse       Search
10 <br />Multi-Family and Commercial Collection <br />The multi-family and commercial programs will also transition to single stream collection at the <br />same time but will not be as noticeable as the curbside transition as they already utilize roll carts. <br />Nevertheless, it will provide a more convenient and easy process for citizens in apartments because <br />they will no longer need to sort. The carts in these locations will stay the same, but the labels will <br />change. <br />The multi-family program collects about 95 percent of the multi-family units in the County and <br />recycled 1,242 tons of material in FY 10-1 1. The five percent that is currently not collected have not <br />been able to comply with the service because of improperly mixing of recyclables or contamination <br />issues. With the efficiencies gained in this program, the Solid Waste Management Department will <br />be able to try collection again at these apartments and will hopefully be more successful with the <br />simpler single stream message. <br />The Solid Waste Management office currently collects recycling from around 250 businesses at <br />about 175 shared collection sites. In FY 10-11, this program recycled 988 tons of material. With the <br />efficiencies gained on single stream staff believes up to 10 to 15 percent more businesses could be <br />added as work load allows. <br />These two programs will experience efficiencies for the reasons mentioned above such as one <br />compartment becoming full before the other, lack of compaction and operator attention to ensuring <br />that each of the two streams are placed into the proper compartment. Nevertheless, these routes will <br />not realize their full potential collecting single stream until the trucks are replaced with single <br />compartment bodies and compacting capabilities as noted in Rural Curbside section. The trucks <br />used for multi-family and commercial collections are identical to those used for rural curbside <br />collection offering maximum operational flexibility and interchangeability. <br />Schools <br />The Orange County Public Schools will change from dual stream to single stream and hopefully <br />find convenience in no longer sorting material. Last year the Orange County School system <br />recycled 66 tons. <br />This is the first year for the Solid Waste Management Department to collect recycling at the Chapel <br />Hill - Carrboro Schools. We have already started collecting single stream here because their <br />previous collector collected their material single stream. In order to minimize confusion we <br />continued to provide the same service. <br />Government Buildings <br />Government buildings were responsible for 131 tons of recycling last fiscal year and we will <br />continue to collect their material in carts inside the buildings. However, it is not clear if we should <br />continue to collect that material dual stream. The large majority of the material that comes from <br />government buildings is high grade paper and since we exchange carts with a box truck there will <br />not be many efficiency gains by combining the material. It may be possible to keep the material <br />separate to gain more revenue from a clean paper stream. Though this decision is not clear yet, we <br />will know before the complete transition in the spring of 2012. <br />8 <br />