Healthy Indoors Magazine
Issue link: https://hi.iaq.net/i/310128
52 May 2014 Miss Sustainable Continued from previous page Phoenix's waste diversion rate for fiscal year 2011-2012 was a meager 13%, which is far below the national average. In early 2012, about one year prior to the Phoenix 40 by 20 launch, I discovered something that was very disturbing to me, especially with our embarrassing waste diversion number. I learned there was/ is a city ordinance (27-21 Residen- tial collection) that says: The City does not provide solid waste collection service to commercial or industrial estab- lishments or to any building with more than 30 multi-family dwelling units, ex- cept as provided in subsection A.2 of this section. *1 In case you're curious, here's what subsection A.2 says: The City will provide solid waste collection service to all dwelling units including: All buildings with less than five dwelling units, including duplex, triplex and four-plex units, and all buildings with five or more units that have been receiving City solid waste col- lection continuously since May 30, 1979. Multiple buildings on one lot cannot be aggregated to avoid the provisions of this chapter. *1 Phoenix does provide solid waste collection (along with recycling services) to residen- tial customers, and of course those "less than five dwelling units." What I really want to know, though, is where the seemingly random 'continuous service since May 30, 1979' date came from? I can't help but picture a group of private solid waste company bigwigs sitting around a table saying "Hey Johnny, throw a date into the hat!" What the hell?! It's no wonder Phoenix was at 13% waste diver- sion rate when the customers who could contribute the largest amounts to the bulk of recycling (and thus revenue for our city) – commercial business and apartment dwell- ers – were purpose- fully, and probably strategically, being excluded. "Away" is big money in case you didn't know. The solid waste industry is a multi- billion dollar indus- try, and Phoenix, with all of its sprawl, has lots of open land to bury it. Just after this time, I was in- formed that the Phoenix Envi- ronmental Quality Commission had made a recommendation to City Council to change the city ordinance banning the city from offering services, includ- ing recycling, to commercial businesses and multi-family units. I created an online petition (http://chn.ge/1o5zEYh) to lay on some community pressure to make this happen. Well, nearly two years has