Hunterdon County is last in recycling... AGAIN

by: Jason Springer

Mon Jan 12, 2009 at 02:45:00 PM EST

They should send Warren County a thank you for breaking up the streak:

Hunterdon County had the lowest recycling rate in New Jersey for seven of the eight years between 1999 and 2006, the last available statistical year.
And the county can thank Warren County in 2001, when Hunterdon was second worst, for not allowing it to be a clean sweep.

Just where do they stand in relation to others:

The state has a goal of recycling at least 50 percent of garbage. The statewide average in 2006, the latest statistical year, was just under 55 percent.
Hunterdon County's rate was 35.3 percent.
Somerset County's rate was 46 percent, while Middlesex County's rate of 64.5 percent was tops in New Jersey.

Not even close. Here is the complete breakdown of recycling by county. It's not like Hunterdon has to do it all on their own either because the state is offering financial assistance. It's has been short sighted on their part because other counties that have chose to push recycling realized economic benefits. Hunterdon County has 180 days to address the problem, but they've already gone years without much of a change.

Jason Springer :: Hunterdon County is last in recycling... AGAIN

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Hunterdon County is last in recycling... AGAIN | 1 comments

garbage in, garbage out? (4.00 / 1)

I took a look at the county recycling figures cited in this article, and analyzed them per capita. There are some interesting and mystifying numbers:

1. Why does Cape May generate so much waste per capita, almost 6 tons, twice the state average? Atlantic and Cumberland are high also -- is this a southern thing, a rural thing? But Salem is below the state average.

2. The only county whose residents can hold their heads high is Sussex, with under a ton of disposed (non-recycled) garbage per person. Funny that Sussex and Hunterdon are so different.

3. Hunterdon is actually 2nd lowest in generated waste per capita (total of disposed and recycled).

Are there anomalies in these figures, such as agricultural waste getting into the municipal waste figures? Do all counties have the same definition of "bulky"?

Anyway, I'm not excusing Hunterdon's low rate of recycling (I don't live there, don't care about the horsy set, etc.) I just think that the most important stat is disposal per person -- lowering that is the only way to limit land fills, etc. If someone buys a million bottles of water a year and recycles every one of them, that's not a good thing overall, right?

by: jimtobias @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 13:28:22 PM UTC