Study: Recycling rates decline on LI

Recycling rates on Long Island declined by about 19 percent in the past decade, according to a new Stony Brook University study out Tuesday that analyzed municipal recycling programs in the region.

The apparent drop -- from recycling 29 percent of solid waste in 1998 to 24 percent in 2009 -- continues a slide tracked in earlier reports by the school's Waste Reduction and Management Institute. Suffolk's recycling rate is 27 percent, compared with 20 percent in Nassau, the study found.

"We think that municipalities aren't pushing people as hard as they could to recycle," said co-author David Tonjes, an assistant professor at Stony Brook. "But we also kind of think that in a sense, recycling has become passé."

Researchers attributed the decline partly to diminished public education and enforcement of recycling laws. But they said it also reflects more accurate accounting methods than those used 10 years ago to count what gets recycled.

Shifts in the waste stream itself may also play a role, they said. Curbside bins contain fewer newspapers than they once did, and containers are more likely to be made of lightweight plastic instead of glass or metal.

The study found Long Island recycling programs grew rapidly in the early 1990s, but are now falling behind those in places such as San Francisco, which recycles 70 percent.

The study also ranked Long Island's 13 towns and two cities on changes in recycling rates over the decade. Those calculations come with a big asterisk, Tonjes warned, because variations in municipal trash and recycling programs make apples-to-apples comparisons difficult.

For instance, communities that collect commercial waste but only track residential recycling -- such as the Town of North Hempstead -- may end up with lower rates than programs that serve only town residents.

And towns that collect yard waste or commercial recyclables tend to end up with higher overall rates than those that don't.

But the Town of Riverhead, which picks up curbside leaf piles, got the lowest 2009 recycling rate -- about 10 percent -- in part because it doesn't track how much yard waste it collects.

"We have not been good at keeping track of our records," Riverhead Supervisor Sean Walter said. "I think we probably have a good recycling rate, but there's just no way to quantify that."

LI recycling rates

Southampton, 85 percent

Shelter Island, 63 percent

Southold, 55 percent

Brookhaven, 30 percent

Islip, 29 percent

Huntington, 27 percent

East Hampton, 26 percent

Smithtown, 24 percent

Hempstead, 23 percent

North Hempstead, 21 percent

Glen Cove, 18 percent

Babylon, 15 percent

Long Beach, 13 percent

Oyster Bay, 12 percent

Riverhead, 10 percent