If all goes as planned, Hartford will soon be partnering with Simple Recycling to run a curbside textile collection program.
How it works: each household — that already receives recycling collection from the City of Hartford — will be issued a pink bag. It may be filled with textiles, like clothes, towels, and pillowcases. Place it on the curb on garbage day. When our recycling/trash drivers see these bags, they virtually tag it. This tells the Simple Recycling collectors where to go, so that they are not wasting energy driving up and down every street. When the bag is collected, another one will be left in its place. Residents doing major de-cluttering can contact Simple Recycling to request additional bags.
So, what happens with the stuff?
That’s worth considering because most of our problems seem rooted in our tendency to live our lives with an “out of sight, out of mind” philosophy. [Those lucky enough to visit the Trash Museum before it closed we might have more understanding of where our junk goes. If you missed that, pick up a copy of Garbage Land.]
In the case of this textile collection program, the materials can go a few places.
Clothing (and other materials) in good condition is sold to thrift stores by Simple Recycling. Curbside pickup is helpful, then, for the many Hartford residents who do not have regular access to a personal car and do not know what the deal is with those random donation boxes found roadside.
That only accounts for 10-20% of the materials collected, though. According to Simple Recycling, about 80% of materials that are of lesser value are exported and sold to international markets, turned into rags, or used for their raw materials. That means they may be turned into home insulation or sold to the automotive industry, for instance.
And 5% still ends up as waste.
Getting more use out of materials is sensible. It’s also a throwback. Hartford used to have rag collectors. Today, we have scrappers, but they focus exclusively on metal objects, from soda cans to anything that will fit in the back of a pickup truck. Like the scrappers, Simple Recycling might be reaping the financial benefits, but by taking more materials out of the trash cans, we are keeping garbage out of the incinerator which is located in Hartford proper. It will be completely optional for residents to participate in the “pink bag recycling” program, but it seems to be in our own best interest to participate.
Bristol, East Hartford, New Britain, West Hartford, and Wethersfield are among those that have adopted pink bag recycling before Hartford.
I have not been able to get a straight answer on exactly when this will start up. The City of Hartford is looking to include a way to virtually tag bulky waste using the same device as for tagging the pink bags, and it seems that once this gets resolved, everything will be good to go.