The average American creates more than three pounds of trash daily, while the average Collier County resident creates about 10 pounds.

Those shocking statistics come from officials at Waste Management (WM), the company that manages the Collier County landfill and curbside pickup service.

The good news for Collier is that the community has worked together to increase recycling to such an extent that decades have been added to the useful lifespan of the 312-acre landfill, located in Golden Gate.

In 1993, county officials told residents the landfill held seven to 10 years worth of space. In 1995, the county hired WM to operate the landfill and the life expectancy grew to 21 years. Now officials say that, partly due to recycling programs, the landfill has up to 26 years left before it is full.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) reported that recycled material from Collier nearly doubled, from 56 tons in 2005 to more than 110 tons in 2006. Collier Solid Waste specialist, Danette Huff, said that although the figures are not yet in for 2007, she estimates that both residential and commercial recycling have

continued to grow.

Businesses in the non-incorporated areas of Collier County’s Solid Waste District are required to recycle and the cities of Naples and Marco Island are considering implementing similar commercial recycling requirements. Both councils have considered such a requirement several times, since the county approved its ordinance in July 2004. Naples City Council approved its own ordinance, just this week, but will not give final approval until May, and closer to October before the Naples enforces the new ordinance.

Lee County and the city of Bonita Springs require all businesses and multifamily housing developments to have recycling programs.

Cost and profitability

Although Naples and Marco have not yet passed resolutions requiring commercial recycling, the plans may become more popular as the gap in cost for recycling versus hauling waste shrinks.

Recycling can cost a business anywhere from $30 to more than $150 a month if they use the services of WM. Often, when their recycling increases, the amount of regular trash goes down, providing a larger costs savings in the end. The Naples Grande Resort, for example, reported an approximate $11,000 annual savings in trash pickup when they implemented their

recycling program.

Small businesses can participate at minimal cost by taking their recyclables and hazardous materials to one of three area recycling centers themselves. Collier County Public Utilities Division spokesperson Margie Hapke said that if the county landfill reached capacity, waste would have to be trucked elsewhere, creating an even greater expense

for everyone.

Although curbside recyclables are taken to a sorting facility out of town, this presents no direct cost to residents and WM is able to sell most recycled items at increasingly good rates, Huff said.

Lee Faye, owner of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, in Naples, has built a profitable business from recycling and reusing 80 percent of the junk he picks up between Marco and Sarasota.

Recycling some materials, such as cardboard, has become so profitable some people are stealing the material. Two men were recently arrested by Collier deputies for stealing bales of recyclable cardboard from two Naples-area supermarkets, which they planned to resell in Miami. A search of the truck turned up 10 bales of compacted, recyclable cardboard, which deputies learned later had been stolen from the HomeExpo Design Center and from area Target stores.

While WM may profit from their collections, Collier County has not yet begun to profit from their hand-sorting method of recycling at their centers. “I’m not sure if it will ever bring a great profit, because we deal with everything. If we just recycled heavy metals, paper and cardboard, we could profit, but we’re getting there and we’re working on finding new buyers every day,” Huff said.

Grocery stores and restaurants remain among the top waste generators, but are working to change their practices, as well. Publix Supermarkets store locations in Collier recycle about 5,000 tons of cardboard annually. Other national chains such as Target, Whole Foods Market and Sweetbay, offer reusable bags at their stores for a nominal fee.

Whole Foods is eliminating plastic grocery bags altogether at its Wild Oats location in North Naples and 270 other stores across the United States.

Costco and Sam’s Club don’t use bags at all and customers still manage to get by, using the cardboard from the original packaging used in shipping, which raises the question of whether or not grocery bags are necessary at all.

Recycling locations and services

Residents may soon find recycling and proper disposal of hazardous materials even more convenient. “Ultimately we plan to have a recycling center within 10 miles of each residence,” Huff said.

There are currently five locations, including Immokalee, Naples, Carnestown, Marco and Golden Gate.

The Marco Island Recycling Center is moving to a new location. Built by Vanderbilt Bay Construction, the new $1.3 million facility, at East Elkcam Circle, across from the old recycling center site, will be open by Earth Day, April 22, Huff said.

The facility will separate commercial and personal traffic; enclose containers for various recyclable materials; provide a separate building for the collection of household hazardous waste; and will require less staffing and equipment than the old center.

Huff said the facility will accept household hazardous waste, including oil, oil filters, gasoline, latex paint, batteries, fluorescent bulbs, ballasts, mercury (including mercury-containing compact fluorescent bulbs), used cooking oil and grease, sharps (needles, blades, etc.), cell phones, construction material, cardboard, metal and biomass.

The Marco Island Recycling Center will be open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and closed for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

Naples Recycling Center, at 2640 W. Enterprise Ave., is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. That center accepts the same materials as the Marco facility, as well as medications, oil-based (alkyd) paints, antifreeze, transmission fluid, hydraulic fluid, propane gas tanks and appliances with Freon. Fees for most residential recycling and disposals are free or under $5.

Carnestown Recycling Center, at U.S. 41 East and State Road 29, is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is closed from noon to 1 p.m. on Monday and Saturday.

Immokalee Recycling Center, 700 Stockade Road, is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

The county landfill and the Waste Management (WM) Facility at 3901 White Lake Blvd. is open from noon to 1 p.m. Tuesday to Friday and from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday.

WM uses what’s known as a single-stream recycling system, which means recyclable items don’t need to be separated; they can be tossed into the yellow-topped bin together for collection, making the process much more convenient than in the past. Residents of condominiums and apartment complexes that don’t have curbside collection may need to separate recyclable items by category. Check with your management team to see if this is required.

Collier’s recycling from WM curbside pickup is sent either to a sorting facility in the Orlando area or a material recovery facility in Pembroke Pines. There, it is fed into a sorting machine, where glass is smashed, magnets pull out the metals, sheets separate paper products and other materials are separated by weight.

Recycling don’ts

Even with its relative simplicity, Huff said there are still a few things that frequently end up in the recycling bins that don’t belong there.

“Packages, bottles and cans need to be empty and relatively clean. If there’s a pound of cheese that you can’t peel off the bottom of the pizza box, just throw it out,” she said.

Compact fluorescent light bulbs are hazardous materials, and up to 12 of them a month can be discarded by residents without a charge at a county recycling center. Plastic bags inside cereal boxes and cracker packages need to be taken out. Only the cardboard is recycled. Thin plastic film not marked with a recycling category (usually a number stamped somewhere on the product), cannot be recycled.

The lightest weight, yet largest offender, Huff said, are styrofoam packing peanuts. “Styrofoam of any type is not recyclable, but those peanuts are the worst. It’s terrible trying to separate that out of the recycling,” she said. They can be reused for packing and many mailing or packaging businesses may accept them.

Electronics are not to go in with the trash, either. Computers, telephones, televisions, radios, stereos and fax machines all should be recycled, because most of them contain materials that cannot be buried in the landfill.

Electronics can be taken to the Naples recycling center free of charge, or curbside pickup can be arranged, 48 hours in advance, on regular collection days by calling 252-2380.

Recyclable do’s -

You may recycle...

-- Plastic jugs, jars, bottles and containers labeled 1 through 7.

-- All paper products that are not metallic, including newspapers, paper bags, office paper, junk mail, phone books, catalogs, magazines, cereal boxes and cardboard, flattened and cut to a maximum 3-by-3-foot size.

-- Tin and aluminum cans. Unlike other recyclable materials that lose their viability in the recycling process, these can be recycled over and over. Americans throw away enough aluminum every three months to rebuild every commercial jetliner in our country.

-- Plastic grocery bags that are labeled as recyclable, food trays and egg cartons.

Here are some tips from the EPA and Collier Solid Waste for minimizing waste:

-- Filter water from the tap, using reusable glasses and bottles, instead of buying and disposing of bottled water, which is often just filtered tap water.

-- Use reusable, cloth grocery bags, instead of non-biodegradable, plastic shopping bags. About 4.6 million tons of plastic bags are used each year and less than 10 percent is recycled.

-- Eliminate paper waste. Use recycled paper, which saves 60 percent in energy use compared with new paper, and generates 95 percent less air pollution.

-- Stop junk mail. There are several ways that you can register online to reduce the amount of junk

mail you receive.

-- Recycle. Recycling one aluminum can saves more than one cup of gasoline. A six-pack of recycled aluminum cans saves enough energy to drive an automobile about six miles.

-- Avoid paper bags. They generate 70 percent more air pollutants and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags. Paper bags do degrade, but forests are being cleared faster than they can sustain themselves. A reusable cloth bag needs to be used 11 times to have a lower environmental impact than paper.

-- Buy in bulk and avoid snack packs. Nearly one-third of municipal waste comes from packaging, so buying in bulk, rather than in snack-sized packaging can be nearly as effective on landfill capacity as recycling.

-- Use green cleaners, like white vinegar, instead of chlorine, ammonia and petroleum-based products. Americans generate 1.6 million tons of waste annually from hazardous cleaning products alone.

For more green tips, visit www.dep.state.fl.us/green/tips/.

For more information about recycling and disposal of hazardous materials in Collier County, visit www.colliercountygov.net and follow the links to Solid Waste Management or call 252-2508.