For the first time since 2011, Lane County is tops for waste recovery in Oregon. KLCC’s Brian Bull has more.
Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality says last year, 50 percent of Lane County’s homes and businesses recycled just over 258,000 tons of material. A similar amount went into the landfill.
Sarah Grimm is the county’s Waste Reduction Specialist. She says typically they rank in the top three waste recovery agencies in the state, with Marion County and the Portland Metro Region. This year they edged both out by a couple percentage points.
“Our community has a really powerful ethic towards recycling, on an individual and family basis, but also the wide variety of non-profit recyclers that we have," says Grimm.
"We can also looks towards the success of our Master Recylcer program. We have more than 800 Master Recyclers trained in our community.”
Grimm figures Lane County residents cut greenhouse gases by 740,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. She says their next goal is to have a 63 percent waste recovery rate by 2025.
Copyright 2017, KLCC.
