Metro

The Intermunicipal Relations Committee is still working on its plan to push for curbside recycling to become mandatory statewide, rather than only in municipalities where the population is high enough or dense enough for the requirement for curbside programs to apply.

If the effort succeeds, it would probably increase compliance with recycling requirements in municipalities where it’s already the law, officials said.

The committee’s board voted in November to make the push, and since then, education and enforcement coordinator AJ Kurtz has consulted with a legislative expert from Professional Recyclers of Pennsylvania (PROP), which is aligned with the state’s Solid Waste Advisory Committee, Kurtz told the board recently.

The expectation is that a letter from the IRC will be sent to local state lawmakers, with followup discussions that aim to identify a lawmaker willing to draft a bill calling for making the curbside programs universal.

Curbside recycling — for at least three of eight listed materials, plus autumn leaves — is currently required for municipalities with populations greater than 10,000 or those between 5,000 and 10,000 and also denser than 300 people per square mile, based on state Act 101, according to online sources.

Kurtz and her predecessors in the IRC have had to work diligently to ensure hauler and resident compliance with the ordinances that frame the program in the IRC municipalities of Altoona, Logan Township and Hollidaysburg.

Some residents have quit recycling because they’ve seen haulers dump recycling bins in the trash portions of packer trucks, said IRC Chairman Jim Patterson.

Conversely, haulers can grow discouraged upon encountering recycling bins contaminated with trash — including broken bottles, styrofoam or electronic components.

Some IRC residents may feel put upon when neighbors just over the line in non-IRC areas put out their trash with no recycling bins — concluding that the recycling requirement that applies to them, but not others, is unfair, Patterson said.

Making the requirement universal would put an end to that, he said.

Similarly, some haulers wouldn’t need to make a distinction between customers who live in IRC territory and those who live in neighboring, non-IRC municipalities, distinctions that can be especially problematic when routes cross those municipal lines, according to officials.