By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — In the span of a year, the city’s solid waste disposal and recycling program has gone from gross to green.

A year ago, the city recycled only 8 percent of its total waste stream, the bottom of the barrel in Rhode Island. That figure now stands at 26 percent, a bigger improvement than any community in the state, bringing the city into eighth place among the 39 cities and towns, according to Sarah Kite, director of recycling services for the Rhode Island Resource and Recovery Corporation.
“Woonsocket has a really, really comprehensive recycling program,” said Kite. “It’s really a model for the state.”
RIRR recently divvied up $2.3 million to the cities and towns - money that represents their share of profits from the sales of recyclable materials dumped at the Central Landfill in Johnston. Woonsocket took in $80,516. North Smithfield ranked fifth overall with a 27 percent recycling rate and took in $37,580; Central Falls, 11th, with 24 percent, took in $35,813; Burrillville, 12th, 23 percent, $41,736; Cumberland, 15th, 22 percent, $95,624; Glocester, 16th, 22 percent, $24,239; and Lincoln, 17th, 22 percent, $56,071.
Pawtucket ranked 7th from the bottom, with a 16 percent recycling rate, but it still took in $103,617. Even though some communities have a lower recycling rate than Woonsocket, they still took in more money because they amount of tonnage they recycled overall is still heftier than the city, said Kites.
Under a mandate to up recycling rates, nearly all communities in the state improved somewhat during the last year, but none more than Woonsocket, she said.
The keys to the city’s success were making recycling super-convenient for homeowners and scaling back municipal services to exclude investment-oriented residential properties, including multi-family homes with more than three units, according to Kite.
Using the private firm Waste Management, the city instituted a program in which recyclable materials are put out for collection in color-coded, 54-gallon carts with wheels affixed to them for easy mobility. On trash day, the bins are emptied by a truck equipped with a special, robot-like arm that allows the driver to empty them into the hopper without getting out of the vehicle.
“You don’t have to lift, lug or drag anything,” said Kite. “It’s very, very convenient. We’ve heard wonderful things from residents about how much they like the carts.”
Of course, said Kite, the city automatically boosted its recycling rates without collecting an ounce more trash merely by lopping off multi-family homes with more than three units from its collection base. Previously, the city had included homes with up to six units in its collection routes.
“That was huge,” says Kite. “The city isn’t under any obligation whatsoever to pick up from commercial units, so it isn’t cheating. It’s just getting back to basics.”
Some communities, like Cumberland, boosted recycling rates with the “no bin, no barrel” program. Simply put, the trash collectors won’t pick up a homeowner’s barrel of non-recyclable trash if a recycling bin does not accompany it, said Kite.
RIRR paid communities $25.58 per ton in profit on recycled material. Except for glass, said Kite, there is a robust market for virtually everything that ends up in blue and green recycling bins - including paper, cardboard, tin and aluminum. The problem with glass, she said, is that it is too heavy, and shipping it to places where it can be properly processed takes much of the profit out of recycling it.
The idea behind all this recycling is to extend the longevity of Central Landfill in Johnston, which is on its fifth - and next-to-last - phase of development. The success of the state’s recycling programs is already projected to have extended the life of the current phase by as much as 18 months.
The state Department of Environmental Management is now processing RIRR’s permits to open up the sixth and last phase of the state’s mountainous landfill, which is expected to run out of room no later than 2021 according to Kite. What the state does with its municipal trash after the facility closes is anyone’s guess. Waste-to-energy incinerators? Another landfill? Ship it to another state?
It’s clear the state is going to have to address the issue long before the landfill runs out of room, according to Kite, but for the time being, RIRR is focused on lengthening the life span of the existing dump through recycling. That’s why, even with all the improvements of late, the state is still pushing cities and towns to do even better.
Under a new law passed by the General Assembly last year, cities and towns will have to reach a 35 percent recycling rate by 2012. The law also requires them to submit a plan for doing so to RIRR by the end of this year.