From bottom of the table for sustainability, Phoenix Arizona has become a poster child for new, sustainable rubbish solutions – thanks to its garbage supremo Ginger Spencer. Jeremy Torr reports.

Phoenix, Arizona. May 2020. According to one estimate remaining landfill space for the whole of the United States will run out in about 60 years. Digging a big hole and filling it with solid, liquid and organic waste is not a sensible long term approach. “This method of deferring a final reckoning has no horizon beyond the next crash — during the most recent credit bubble, for instance,” says Andrew Ross, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Ross discusses this approach in an article on the city of Phoenix, which he described as the World’s Least Sustainable City.

Slightly stung by this label, the city has decided to make a serious effort to deal with one aspect of its unsustainable label – its rubbish. Phoenix is expected to grow to 2.2 million residents by 2030, an increase of nearly 1 million residents since 2000, and to “not invest in solid waste services and infrastructure, including recycling, would be an abdication of our responsibility to create a healthy and livable environment for current and future generations,” notes Colin Tetreault, board member of Phoenix’s Environmental Quality and Sustainability Commission. “We must take responsibility for our waste and view materials as assets that should be managed, not simply buried in a hole,” he says.

The residents of Phoenix have taken note, and are now amongst America’s best recyclers. The key to this dramatic change is one woman, Ginger Spencer, the city’s Public Works Director. She started her career in Phoenix as a social worker, worked as an intern then went into arts administration. But her biggest move was to the role of Public Works Director.

“I specialize in talking trash,” she smiles. “No, seriously. I’m the Director of Public Works for the fifth largest City in the nation.” She is responsible for overseeing garbage and recycling services to 400,000 households every week, and says her department is “…doing some exciting things where we’re taking our waste and transforming it into new products – creating jobs, economic activity, innovation, and new technology.” 

In the last 30 years, Phoenix has gone from a population of 900,000 to the fifth largest metropolis in the nation, now with 1.6 million residents. A staggering average of 100 people move to Phoenix every day, and say the local government managers, that growth is likely to continue with population doubling within the next ten years.

When Spencer took on the job, Phoenix had already used up five landfills that were so poorly constructed that they were in danger of catching fire from methane leaks, leaching toxic chemicals into the water table, and had so damaged the land around that they can’t be built on or farmed anytime in the future. And all that damage had come from the city’s residents.

Spencer decided the first thing she and her team needed to understand was what was being thrown out, and if anything could be recycled or reused. She commissioned a Waste Study, which looked at the way the city’s garbage was made up. The study found that nearly 75% of the things people threw away could potentially be recycled, repurposed or composted. And as part of this, she helped develop the potential of a new landfill site, opened in 2006. This landfill boasts impermeable liners to protect the water table, special deep-pipe bores that siphon off methane that rotting garbage produces as it decomposes, and a GPS-based fill-prediction system that ensures loads of garbage are dumped in the best and most effective zones for dumping specific types of rubbish. According to Spencer, the new landfill should last the city at least another 60 years.

But nonethelees, the site was 90km outside main city limits which meant tonnes and tonnes of big trucks driving up to 125 trips a day, to transport all of Phoenix’s garbage. Not good for CO2 emissions. 

So Phoenix took an alternative approach, and began to see what it could do to cut down on the production of rubbish in the first place. Cardboard, paper and metal cans were already being recycled, but one of the big sore thumbs that the Waste Report found was the amount of what it labeled ‘yard waste.’

First, the city experimented with bins designed exclusively for grass and tree trimmings, at first in areas that produced the most of that kind of waste. The program went well, but the experiment soon showed that one particular type of vegetation rubbish - palm fronds – was causing a significant problem as it was almost impossible to mulch down and recycle.

Luckily, a company called Palm Silage had worked out a recipe that used palm fronds, combined with dates, to make pellets that can be used as feed for horses, cows, and even goats. Once the palm fronds have been dried out and ground down, it's a good source of nutrients for livestock. Initially, the city paid the company to clear up to 34,000 tonnes of the pesky vegetation a year. "It is definitely important because we're only going to get bigger population here," said, Public Works Ops manager Stacy Hettmansperger. "This does help our future generations. It helps extend the life of our landfill."

For other recycling, the city already had a plastic waste bin system up and running, but the city wanted to look closer to home for a solution that would last – rather than shipping the problem overseas. Now the city is negotiating a deal to build a local facility that can turn plastics into fuel, which will help power Phoenix’s public works fleet.

The city has also put together a ‘Dumpster Guide’ to help people that have unusual items – from mattresses to car tyres or ceiling tiles – that they want to get rid of. But the issue with recycling quality has continued to rear its dirty head. The waste survey revealed that as much as 30% of the items residents put in recycling bins weren’t actually recyclable. Which makes any recycling or reuse initiative very difficult – or expensive - as it needs a sophisticated sorting component before it can even start running. The city ran a pilot project called Oops Shine On in 2018. This saw garbage workers checking recycling bins for accuracy of recycling selection. They then stuck red or green notes on the bin depending on their consistency at recycle selection. Unclean food containers, lawn clippings, old clothes, wooden items and greasy pizza boxes can’t be recycled, yet people regularly put these items in their recycling bins.

If they did put these in, they got a red “Oops” note saying the stuff the bin can’t be recycled. If they got it right, they got a green “Shine On” sticker for being a good recycler. If a house gets two Oops notes in a row, the workers will drag the un-emptied bin into the house it belongs to, to make it obvious they need to work harder. If it happens more often the operators will take the bin away completely.

This approach has been a significant success. The initial area it was trialled had a 70% initial recycling contamination rate. Six weeks later, this was reduced to only 30%.

“Our focus is actually on the younger generations,” adds Spencer. “We're working very closely with schools in the area. We're trying to get the next generation, because we know that if we teach a child how to recycle, they’re little sponges, and then they're going to go home and tell their parents about it.”