Bay Village, Ohio, tops Cuyahoga County in recycling

Cleveland.com, the website for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, reports that Bay Village, Ohio, achieved the highest recycling rate—73.5 percent—in Cuyahoga County in 2015. 

The results were announced in the Residential Recycling Report released by the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste District. Countywide, the residential recycling rate was more than 35.4 percent, which is more than 10 percentage points greater than the state’s 25 percent goal, the article says. 

According to district officials, much of the success can be attributed to communities issuing residents 64-gallon recycling carts. 

The newspaper reports that Chris Perry of the neighboring Lakewood Public Works Department also credits the larger carts for the improvement. (Lakewood, which also use large carts to collect single-stream recyclables, achieved a 51.6 percent recycling rate in 2015, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.)  

“Having a higher diversion percentage is key,” Perry says in the article. “This saves the city money in the long run, as there are higher costs associated with waste disposal fees.” 

Solid waste officials add that more needs to be done to address public confusion about recycling. To this end, Cuyahoga County launched its “Recycle More, Recycle Better” campaign. 

“We’ve set out to reduce that confusion by creating consistent messaging about how to recycle properly,” Cuyahoga County Solid Waste District Executive Director Diane Bickett told the newspaper.