Reuse of resources is one of the indisputable ways everyone can help the environment, so why is Santa Fe so behind the times when it comes to recycling?

State statistics show 20 percent of the waste in Bernalillo County is recycled. In Los Alamos, 17 percent of trash avoids the landfill. But Santa Fe County, including the city of Santa Fe, recycles just 8.76 percent of trash.

Residents here notice.

"The attitude toward recycling is not nearly as progressive as a city like Santa Fe's should be," said Lucas Conley, a writer who moved here from the West Coast. "I think Santa Fe should be way out in front."

Conley is doing his part to recycle household waste on the South Capitol street where he lives. But some of his neighbors aren't catching on. On a recent trash day, 17 of the 27 households on his block of Coronado Road had put out recycling bins. Some were half full. Conley and his wife, on the other hand, fill a row of paper bags with items such as steel soup cans and plastic soap bottles.

"I feel like it's kind of shocking that Santa Fe is not one of the most seamless programs in the country. I'm glad we have a program, but I think it needs to be more of a priority," he said.

Participation in the city's curbside residential recycling pickup program is not easy to gauge. Even when households recycle, many don't include all items they could, or don't understand what to leave out.

Except for anecdotal reports from collectors, the city is not even really sure how many residents use the teal bins to dispose of paper, plastic, steel, aluminum and glass. Some residents have yet to realize the city moved from biweekly to weekly recycling pickup in January.

Meanwhile, county residents have to drive their recyclables, along with trash, to a transfer station. If they use a private trash hauler, they must pay a $15 annual fee to use a neighborhood drop-off, or they can deliver goods to the regional facility northwest of Santa Fe's city limits and avoid a charge.

The joint city/county Solid Waste Management Agency opened the materials-recovery facility last year at the site of a former city transfer station on Buckman Road. Their idea was to capture revenue from the sale of recycled goods and avoid paying other entities to take the goods away.

Although bales of paper, corrugated cardboard, plastic, steel and aluminum fetched a higher-than-anticipated price last year, the city and county have not been delivering enough recyclables for the facility to make a decent profit, according to Randall Kippenbrock, agency director.

The agency, which also manages the Caja del Rio Landfill, can't do much more to improve the bottom line unless the recycling center gets more goods, he said.

"The burden is on the collectors, whether it is the city or Santa Fe County or (the private hauler) Waste Management, that's what I see," said Kippenbrock. "They need to step it up. I cannot go out there and do it for them."

Collectors might look to Los Alamos County for inspiration when it comes to participation. Curbside recycling has been in place there since 1992 and is widely used.

"This community is very clear and aware of the impacts of global warming and the urgent need to change our lifestyle. And they really are looking for every opportunity to do the right thing," explained Regina Wheeler, Los Alamos County environmental services manager.

Wheeler said other factors make the program a success, such as distribution of convenient roll-away carts for both trash and recycling to about 6,800 households.

Los Alamos County brings its recyclable goods to Santa Fe's facility for processing. They comprise about 18 percent of the facility's recycling tonnage. (For comparison, the city of Santa Fe makes up 53 percent, and Santa Fe County contributes 15 percent, according to agency data.)

"We also have a lot of people from other countries and other states that come here, and where they came from, recycling has been part of their culture," said Wheeler. "Maybe Santa Fe has a harder row to hoe on that because curbside recycling is not really a big thing there yet."

Obstacles to collections

Santa Fe city officials admit they have at least two big obstacles to overcome in order to maximize collection efforts. First, few businesses use the city to recycle because the cost of commercial pickup is high. Second, multifamily dwellings such as apartment buildings have limited participation.

The City Council recently adopted a resolution calling for officials to address both recycling obstacles and to increase the city's recycling diversion rate to 33 percent — a statewide goal promoted by the New Mexico Recycling Coalition.

This is not the first time officials have vowed improvement. In 2004, they established a two-year goal of a 20 percent diversion rate. Four years later, city rates are still below that number.

This year, the recycling coalition has targeted Santa Fe in its annual public-awareness campaign, an action it says resulted in improved recycling habits last year when the focus was on Albuquerque.

When it comes to recycling at apartments, the city's goal is to educate complex managers, said Leo C. de Baca, residential recycling coordinator. Apartments that have large roll-off bins for trash collection also have 90-gallon carts for recycling. In many cases, he said, they are ignored or used incorrectly.

"Most people don't really know how to recycle. They just think that it's garbage," he said. "It's sad, but that's the way it is."

The hurdle, he said, is a lack of education. Randall Marco agrees. His job at the city includes public relations for the Solid Waste Department, and he spends a good deal of time explaining the rules of recycling here.

The biggest misunderstanding, he said, is about plastic. The joint recycling center — which also takes goods from Waste Management — only takes plastics labeled as No. 1 or No. 2. Food containers from takeout joints and single-serving yogurt tubs along with objects that have no number stamp are not acceptable.

"If people were more aware of that, it would make our job a lot easier. People are mindless about throwing stuff in recycling bins," he said.

On the business side, the city's commercial recycling rate would have been sliced in half by a proposal floated at City Hall late this summer, but Solid Waste Director Bill DeGrande said he put that on hold in order to get a better picture of projected expenses for his division in the coming year.

DeGrande said when he took the reins of the department two years ago, he had planned to adjust the rate soon. Meanwhile, fewer than 100 of the city's businesses participate. While some big-box stores haul away their own corrugated cardboard for recycling, many discard boxes along with other refuse.

Advancing political will

Instead of waiting for collectors to change the rates or businesses to change their habits, private waste consultant Justin Stockdale suggests the joint agency could take another step: banning cardboard from the landfill.

Stockdale held various city, county and joint-agency jobs before he set up the recycling center and ran it for a year. He says improving recycling rates is all about political will.

"The classic problem with garbage and politics is that if nobody is screaming, everybody thinks it's fine," he said. "Nobody has the desire to get beyond the status quo."

That's not say progress has stopped. At the joint agency, a new crushing machine that allows for recycling of fluorescent light bulbs went into use this year. A contract that allows the Rio Arriba-area North Central Solid Waste Authority to bring goods to Santa Fe should increase tonnage, too, because that agency will start a pilot curbside program later this month in Española.

Recycling expanded to Pecos last year, when Santa Fe County used a state grant to start a drop-off program just over the border in San Miguel County. This spring, Santa Fe County also began a weekly pickup of paper and other goods at all county office buildings and workshops.

The city also finally began pickup of recyclables in all state office buildings in downtown Santa Fe this year and started a Plaza program that provides recycling bins for Spanish Market, Indian Market and other events.

In the future, city officials are hoping a proposed change to trash rates will make a difference. DeGrande is promoting a plan to charge more when residents exceed one trash container, and he says that will increase recycling rates if residents are properly educated.

Still, according to Sarah Pierpont of the New Mexico Recycling Coalition, the region could — and should — do better.

Increasing the rate of recycling will prolong the life of the landfill, not to mention that it contributes to air quality by reducing manufacturing of new goods.

"There is no reason not to recycle in Santa Fe," she said. "A lot of people know they should recycle and they know it's important. It's just taking that little tiny extra step."

Contact Julie Ann Grimm at 986-3017 or jgrimm@sfnewmexican.com.