Commercial recycling to expand in Lombard

The first months of a commercial recycling program at Yorktown Center in Lombard were so successful the village now will offer the program to all businesses and commercial properties.

Waste Management will be mailing letters to 800 businesses and commercial properties in the village by the end of March, inviting them to join the program, which offers a free recycling container and free weekly pickup, said trustee Dana Moreau, chairwoman of the village board’s environmental concerns committee.

Jim Karls, municipal marketing manager for Waste Management, said the program is about actively “soliciting and promoting recycling.”

It began at Yorktown Center in November, collecting cardboard from individual stores in six containers near loading docks, said Lindsey Burke, marketing manager.

“We started recycling cardboard because that has been a large contributor to our garbage in the past,” Burke said. “One of our big goals is to become more sustainable, so by collecting the cardboard from our merchants, we are saving a lot of room in landfills.”

In November, the mall recycled 5,760 pounds of cardboard, and with all the holiday shipments of December, that month’s total climbed to 19,320 pounds, according to Waste Management. The December amount is enough to save the equivalent of 116 mature trees.

Burke said an average of 12,000 pounds was collected each month in January and February.

Although the mall did not recycle until November, 52 percent of Lombard’s 800 businesses and commercial properties recycle to some degree, according to a survey village staff conducted last July.

“We are going to hopefully increase that significantly,” Assistant Public Works Director Dave Gorman said. “We’ll re-evaluate this with another survey in the near future once they’ve had some months to implement this (program).”

Most businesses that said they recycle use a fee-based recycling service already available through Waste Management, Gorman said. The free recycling container and weekly pickup should convince more businesses to opt in and recycle, he added.

“If we can get them (businesses) going, we would be really pleased,” Karls said.