A countywide—and potentially regionwide—single-stream recycling program aimed at recovering a greater amount of materials and diverting them from disposal in the waste-to-energy incinerator and landfills likely will be in place in little more than a year, waste handlers here say.

Waste Management of Spokane is negotiating with the city of Spokane, Spokane County, and private haulers to implement a consistent, broad recycling program and hopes to have some contracts in place this month, says Ken Gimpel, the company's Spokane-based municipal relations manager.

"We're looking at implementing single-stream recycling in the summer of 2012," Gimpel says.

The single-stream program will accept a greater amount of recyclable materials than the newsprint, limited plastics, cardboard, aluminum, steel, batteries, and glass collected at curbside now, Gimpel says.

Additional materials to be collected will include gray board, such as cereal boxes; all paper junk mail; all rigid plastics, including margarine and cottage cheese containers; and scrap metal, such as pots and pans, foil, and pie tins, he says.

Collection services will replace residential customers' picnic cooler-sized blue recycling bins with carts similar to their trash and yard-waste carts, Gimpel says.

Meantime, Waste Management, a subsidiary of Houston-based Waste Management Inc., has expanded its plans to construct a 60,000-square-foot materials recovery facility that will provide up to 45 permanent jobsand process up to 26 tons of material an hour, he says.

The new plans call for a facility that's 17,000 square feet larger, with 20 more jobs, and a capacity of 11 more tons per hour than it originally announced last year.

In all, the company plans to make a nearly $20 million capital investment in the facility, Gimpel says.

Scott Windsor, director of the city of Spokane's solid waste department, says the department plans to switch to a single-stream recycling program when the planned Waste Management facility comes online.

The department has budgeted for new trucks and collection carts to implement the system, Windsor says.

"Our recycling trucks are about 12 years old," he says. "We've needed to purchase new trucks for a couple of years. Funds are in reserve, and we are going to be able to do this at no additional cost to customers."

Because the drivers won't have to sort recycling materials, the department likely will replace 15 compartmentalized recycling trucks with 11 automated trucks that will operate much the same as the trash-collection trucks, Windsor says.

The department, which employs 180 people, likely will need fewer workers with the single-stream system, he says.

"We have constant turnover, and I think we wouldn't replace certain positions," Windsor says.

Gimpel says Waste Management of Spokane provides recycling collection service to 55,000 households in Spokane Valley, Millwood, Liberty Lake, Deer Park, and portions of unincorporated Spokane County, using 12 compartmentalized trucks.

With single-stream recycling, the company would be able to use trucks with compaction equipment.

"We may be able to reduce that to nine trucks," he says. "The same trucks could be used to pick up garbage and yard debris."

Waste Management's materials recovery facility will be located on 8 acres of leased land in the Spokane International Airport Business Park next to the waste-to-energy plant, at 2900 S. Geiger Blvd., Gimpel says.

Due to the plant's proximity to Spokane International Airport, the design has been reviewed and cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration. It now is under a required State Environmental Policy Act review.

Gimpel says recyclable materials will be separated at the facility through a combination of manual sorting, vacuum pipes, fans, conveyer belts, crushers, magnetic currents, and gravity.

Kootenai County implemented the first phase of a single-stream recycling program last October.

Roger Saterfiel, director of the Kootenai County Solid Waste Department, says that program has started in the city of Coeur d'Alene, and the department is promoting it now to other cities in the county.

Saterfiel says Coeur d'Alene is seeing a 60-percent participation rate in Coeur d'Alene. Prior to single-stream recycling, participation was only 25 to 30 percent.

The program is diverting nearly three times more material from Kootenai County's Fighting Creek Landfill, than the city's old recycling program, he says.

The single-stream program collects a broader array of materials, including all types of clean paper and most plastics. The Kootenai County program doesn't pick up glass, though.

"There's no market for it," Saterfiel says. "It does cost money to get rid of glass. Any recycling we do has to pay for itself."

Spokane, however, likely will continue to collect glass as a recyclable material.

"Glass doesn't do any good in the waste-to-energy plant," Windsor says. "It's used in some paving projects, and we're evaluating glass as landscaping mulch."

While the recycling program in Coeur d'Alene has been expanded to include more materials, collection fees there haven't changed, Saterfiel says.

"As part of the negotiations, we wanted to see the program implemented and carts provided at no additional charge to the community," he says.

Waste Management transports Coeur d'Alene's recyclables to a small materials recovery facility operated by Spokane Recycling Products Inc., at 3407 E. Main, in Spokane.

The difference in the volume of waste going to the Fighting Creek Landfill is significant, Saterfiel says.

"We've had probably 80 fewer 40-foot semi-trailers going to the landfill since the program was implemented," he says.

Such a reduction in waste likely will extend the life of the landfill, located about 16 miles south of Coeur d'Alene, especially as other communities participate in single-stream recycling.

"When one community goes to single-stream recycling, it seems to spread quickly," he says. "Post Falls is looking at it, and others will in the near future as well."

Mike Young, general manager at Spokane Recycling Products Inc., says recyclables from Coeur d'Alene are sorted at the company's facility here.

From there recyclables are shipped to markets far and near. Newspapers, for instance, are hauled to Inland Empire Paper Co., in Millwood; steel cans go to Seattle; scrap aluminum is transported to Anheuser-Busch Cos. facilities in Kentucky and Alabama; and plastics are shipped to Canada and China

Spokane Recycling is expanding its Bluebird Recycling Inc. facility, at 4885 N. Industrial Way, in Coeur d'Alene, in anticipation of single-stream recycling gaining momentum throughout North Idaho, Young says.

The expansion will include installing new sorting equipment, Young says. He declines to disclose the cost of the project, but says, "it's a substantial investment for us."

Gimpel says Waste Management's materials recovery facility here will be designed as a regional facility, and the company hopes to serve neighboring Stevens and Lincoln counties as well as North Idaho counties.

The facility also will handle materials collected in Wenatchee and Ellensburg that currently are hauled to a West Side plant, he says.

Windsor says the city of Spokane picks up about 12,000 tons of recyclables a year. "If we could add 50 percent, that could save $600,000 in disposal costs," he says.

Spokane's recyclable materials are delivered to Spokane Recycling Products and Pacific Steel & Recycling, at 114 N. Ralph, at the end of each collection day.

The waste-to-energy plant processes about 280,000 tons of waste a year, and another 60,000 tons of waste is hauled to the Roosevelt Regional Landfill, about 250 miles southwest of Spokane.

Collection fees that city residents pay likely won't change under the planned single-stream system, Windsor says.

Waste Management says it will act as its own contractor on the project and likely will hire local subcontractors.

The plans are "all based on what we anticipate volume increases to be once single-stream is offered in this region," Gimpel says. "Once you don't have to sort and have multiple bins, it takes out the hassle factor, and people really utilize it."

Single-stream recycling, along with recycling of organic solid waste, and disposal via the waste-to-energy plant, will go a long way toward eliminating reliance on landfills, says Larry Condon, general manager of Barr-Tech LLC, of Sprague.

Barr-Tech operates a 40-acre facility 22 miles west of Spokane that converts organic waste into compost, and also plans to produce electricity by early next year, Condon says.

The facility currently is processing organic waste at the rate of 75,000 tons a year, most of which comes from Spokane County, he says.

Barr-Tech employs 14 people and expects to continue to grow as it expands its market beyond Spokane and Lincoln counties to accept yard waste, food waste, and biosolids from communities throughout Eastern Washington and North Idaho, Condon says.

"We are about to build an anaerobic digester, which will add renewable power production to the facility," he says.