In this kitchen, trash is treated with respect.
Melanie Peterson-Nafziger carefully cleans up, putting a milk jug in one bin, the cap for the jug in another. Paper goes into a recycling bin.
She slips a wine cork into the cork-recycling bowl. She carries food scraps outside to her compost pile. Egg cartons go back to the man who sells her eggs.
Her nonrecycled garbage? It fills half a shoebox. For the week. For a family of four.
"It all makes such perfect sense to me," said Peterson-Nafziger, of St. Paul, sliding a battery-recycling bowl back into a cabinet.
But is Minnesota ready to follow her example?
The future of recycling is at stake. After surging ahead in the 1980s, Minnesota's recycling rate has stagnated for
Green advocates hope to recharge the movement by centralized recycling of food scraps.
They say organics recycling will sweep Minnesota, just as recycling of aluminum, glass and paper has. They say that eventually Minnesotans will automatically sort out their leftovers, knowing they will be made into Earth-friendly compost.
But composting your lunch isn't like recycling a pop can.
Early tests of potential interest are mixed. Even some avid recyclers balk at recycling table scraps, which can bring smells and insects to their kitchens.
And the environmental benefits are debatable. Skeptics don't think curbside food-scrap collection
"If it does not save money and doesn't do much for the environment, why are we doing it?" said Winston Porter, president of the Waste Policy Center in Virginia and a former assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
"We are not exactly running out of mulch in this country."
43 PERCENT AND FLAT
For the past 15 years, Minnesota has recycled about 43 percent of its solid waste each year -- and that rate has remained flat.
That's well above the national average of about 34 percent. "Minnesotans are really good recyclers," said Maggie Mattacola, communications director of the Recycling Association of Minnesota.
But recycling advocates are discouraged to see no progress, despite decades of promotion.
"The entire state has experienced a stagnation of performance," said the Metropolitan Solid Waste Management Policy Plan 2010-30, written by the state Pollution Control Agency.
The stall in recycling is partly due to the economic slowdown, which has reduced trash and recyclables. And the weight of recycled materials is falling because of smaller newspapers, skinnier catalogs and thinner aluminum cans.
But recycling might have hit a ceiling.
"A large amount of people, through laziness or just not caring, are just not going to recycle," said Jim Wollschlager, spokesman for Randy's Environmental Services, a west metro recycling business.
Recycling advocates have wondered what, if anything, can be done to increase recycling rates. "We have tried educational campaigns," Mattacola said.
FOOD IS NEXT
Their solution? Organics recycling.
America's food waste put into landfills in 2010 was about 14 percent of the total waste generated, according to the EPA. The country recycles a mere 3 percent of its food waste.
Minnesota has decided to change that.
The state PCA has set a metro-area goal of reducing the annual flow into landfills by 75 percent by 2030, said
Of that 75 percent reduction, between 9 percent and 16 percent must come from recycling organic material, he said. The rest would come from expanding conventional recycling and other programs.
Food scraps will become the third wave of recycling.
The first was in the 1980s and 1990s, when recycling services spread across the state. The next wave, spreading gradually today, is no-sort recycling. This allows homeowners to put all recyclables into one bin -- which is more expensive but boosts recycling rates.
The third wave -- organics recycling -- has already started in a group of communities around Wayzata and some neighborhoods in Minneapolis.
St. Paul could be next. The nonprofit Eureka Recycling is proposing to start no-sort recycling and organics recycling in the city, adding $23 a year to the $37 every household now pays for recycling. The city council is expected to vote on the plans next year.
Every household would pay for the service, whether it uses it or not.
In that way, the program would reflect a social value, said Eureka spokeswoman Dianna Kennedy. She compared it to libraries -- paid for by all taxpayers if not necessarily used by all.
"I see it as another quality-of-life investment we make," she said. "I have thousands in St. Paul who want composting."
Eureka Chief Executive Tim Brownell said pilot programs in 2001 and 2010 concluded that 55 percent to 60 percent of households would participate in an expanded recycling service.
But others say centralized organics recycling will wither like a composted apple core.
Only 13 percent of households participated in an organics recycling pilot project recently run by Allied Waste Services, which handles garbage and recycling in much of the metro area. Allied test-marketed 200 homes in the metro area, educated homeowners and provided separate green bins.
But the 13 percent was greater participation than what was seen for a Eureka program in the Macalaster-Groveland neighborhood of St. Paul. There, subscribers pay $40 a year to bring food waste to a centralized pick-up site. In a neighborhood of about 8,000, about 150 are participating.
Tenley Johnson lives in the neighborhood. She recalled the rotten smells and insects in her kitchen when she participated in a trial run.
"A lot of people would try to do it," said Johnson, who now composts in her back yard. "But we have to make it cleaner and more efficient."
Participation rates could be raised if residents were convinced the programs help the environment. But the green benefits are as slippery as a half-recycled banana peel.
Every commercial organics recycling truck in the metro area must drive to a composting plant in Empire Township -- 26 miles south of downtown St. Paul.
That costs money, increases traffic and contributes to air pollution.
Closer substations would help, said Eureka's Kennedy.
"For us to drive trucks to Empire Township is wildly expensive," she said.
Advocates say composting reduces the need for landfills. But the PCA says landfills are in no danger of filling up and more could be built if they do.
Composting prevents the formation of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas created when organics are thrown into landfills.
But the EPA says landfills -- such as the four that serve the metro area -- capture an average of 75 percent of methane. All of the metro landfills use methane to generate electricity.
Despite that, Mark Rust, supervisor of the sustainable-material management unit of the state PCA, said that compost has value as a water-retaining soil additive that reduces pollution. But that doesn't mean it has much monetary value.
Aluminum is recycled into aluminum cans; and paper into other paper products. But food scraps can be turned only into compost, which often sells for less than topsoil -- making it literally dirt-cheap.
Scott Nutzmann doesn't see the point of centralized composting. He owns the Clo-Spin Cleaners only three doors away from recycling super-star Peterson-Nafziger, yet his attitude is worlds apart.
"Why should you compost leftovers?" said Nutzmann, as he folded a pair of pants. "You throw it in the dump and it eventually becomes dirt again anyway."
BETTER IN THE BACK YARD?
Centralized composting programs face competition from Mother Nature herself.
Unlike recycling of aluminum and glass, composting happens naturally when organic material is left outdoors. So backyard composting has the same benefits as a city-sponsored program, without running expensive, air-polluting trucks.
That's good for the environment, but bad for business.
Many hauling companies are paid by the ton to remove trash and recyclables. To them, a backyard composter is a missing customer, the same as someone who doesn't recycle at all.
Eureka says it avoids this quandary by being a nonprofit. If its organics service is paid for by everyone in St. Paul, Eureka won't be hurt by competition, so it could -- and will -- encourage backyard recycling.
But the program will need to appeal to enough voters to get city council support. And many resent being forced to pay for a service they won't use.
"The idea of the government grabbing this drives me up a wall," said Erik Knutson, as he sold a six-pack of beer in Scott's Liquor Store in the same St. Paul neighborhood.
Knutson composts in his yard in Little Canada -- which works just fine, thank you. "Where are they going to take it that's any better?" he asked.
And another potential competitor? A food-to-hogs program run out of Anoka County.
It collects food waste from businesses and schools and uses it to feed thousands of hogs. The hogs are fed about 23,000 tons of food scraps each year, which could be composted.
In all, Allied Waste spokesman Rich Hirstein doesn't see much potential for organics recycling programs.
"You do not even have half the people recycling now," Hirstein said. He said it isn't realistic to assume that a majority will go along with the more-difficult recycling of food scraps.
It's not worth the money, said Porter of the Waste Policy Center.
The current national recycling rate of about one-third is "not a bad number," he said. "But to get to 70 or 90 percent, that is not cost-effective and not good for the environment."
"It is not bad to have things resting peacefully in landfills. A piece of plastic in a landfill is not going to hurt anyone."
There is one indisputable benefit of recycling -- jobs.
Recycling now employs about 36,000 people statewide, said Mattacola of the Recycling Association.
It pays $2 billion in salaries, part of the $8.5 billion in economic activity that recycling adds to the state's economy, according to Rust of the PCA.
To pay for recycling, the state charges businesses a 17 percent tax on garbage bills, and 9 percent for residents. Counties add their own surcharges -- such as Ramsey County's 53 percent for businesses and 28 percent for residents.
And adding organics to the mix could boost recycling's economic impact.
The value of recycled materials is multiplied, said Rust, because of the money required to collect them, sort them, and use them to manufacture new products.
Dump food scraps in a landfill, and they never generate revenue again.
"If you throw it away in garbage, you are throwing away money and jobs," said Wayne Gjerde, recycling market development coordinator for the PCA.
People had to learn to love conventional recycling, and they will do the same with organics recycling, predicted Ramsey County's Hansen.
"People will look at what they throw away not as waste, but as a resource," said Hansen. "They will say, 'This banana peel -- this is a resource.' "
But recyclers don't always think about the money. They share a zeal that is almost spiritual -- celebrating connections with the planet, ties with the community and harmony with what is eaten, discarded or reused.
"I love the idea that I can spread this beautiful compost on my garden," said Peterson-Nafziger, as she dumped a few rinds on her compost heap.
She knows her neighbors don't share her delight in her compost, which to them looks a lot like dirt. But they will learn as the next wave hits, she said.
"We see the economy and the environment and people's lifestyles," she said, "and right now they are all colliding."
Bob Shaw can be reached at 651-228-5433. Follow him at twitter.com/BshawPP.
Is landfill space really that scarce?
To the list of things Minnesota has plenty of -- lakes, walleyes, therapy clinics -- we can now add landfills.
"To say we are literally running out of space, and that we don't have land for landfills -- that is an old notion, more of a myth," said Mark Rust, supervisor of the sustainable-material management unit of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
The status of landfills is important because a key argument supporting organics recycling is that it reduces the need for scarce landfill space.
Rust said that at the current landfill demand of 917,000 tons a year, the metro area has 10 to 20 years of capacity left.
The end date could change according to how much people recycle in the future, market demand for recyclables, changes in permits for landfills and other factors.
But when the current sites are full, new ones can be built, Rust said.
There might be local resistance, but Rust is confident that land will be available.
Four landfills serve the metro area: Spruce Ridge Landfill near Glencoe, Pine Bend Landfill in Inver Grove Heights, Burnsville Landfill and Elk River Landfill.
All have liners to prevent seepage of pollution into groundwater. All capture the greenhouse gas methane and use it to generate electricity.
The shortage of landfill space nationally is often exaggerated, said Winston Porter, president of the Waste Policy Center in Virginia.
Across the country, there are some landfill shortages in areas such as New York City and New Jersey. But most cities have plenty of room. Denver, for example, has 50 to 100 years of capacity in existing landfills.
In one often-cited hypothetical, the nation's waste for the next 1,000 years could be placed in a single landfill 100 yards deep and 35 miles on each side -- a fraction of the space available nationwide.
Recycling of food scraps would certainly extend the life of landfills. But another way to do that would be to expand existing recycling programs.
That would reclaim part of the $285 million in recyclable material thrown away in Minnesota last year -- which cost about $200 million in hauling expenses, according to Rust.
-- Bob Shaw