Teams pull pounds of recyclables from garbage

Most people don't want to spend their mornings sorting through a mountain of grease-stained pizza boxes, soggy cardboard and soiled newspaper.

But for 10 minutes Tuesday, nine Kent residents were willing to go deep into their own and other people's garbage and sort out recyclables in hopes of being crowned the city's new "green team."

Three teams of three participated in a competition sponsored by the King County Solid Waste Division, a bit of fun to demonstrate that there's room for improvement when it comes to recycling.

At 10:30 a.m., two Allied Waste Services trucks dumped garbage from 75 Kent homes onto 126th Avenue Southeast. The race was on. The teams scrambled to outsort each other, and at the end of 10 minutes the team with the heaviest pile of sorted recyclables would win.

Krissy Kenneally tried to pack a big piece of cardboard into a large recycling bin, while her teenage daughter Hannah and friend Anika Giske looked for stray pieces of plastic inside a grocery bag overflowing with receipts.

"It's trickier than it looks," Kenneally said.

The Green Dream Team, which consisted of Dawn Hardley, Carrie Fjeld and Maria Garcia from a property-management company in Kent, won with 132 pounds of sorted material. The Eco Challengers — Margret Reid, and her sons Danny and Matt — took second place with a 126-pound pile. Kenneally's team, The Green Queen and Her Teens, had 67 pounds, putting them in third place.

The morning's competition was a small bit of fun, but it was to draw attention to a big objective: King County is pushing for residents to recycle 45 percent of their nonfood household waste by 2015. The current rate for the county is 35 percent.

"We want people who do recycle to do more and those who don't to start," said Gerty Coville, King County program analyst for recycling and environmental services.

The recycling competition was in Kent, because South King County, including the cities of Auburn, Federal Way and Renton, has the lowest recycling rate, 23-30 percent of all waste, said Coville. The county's Eastside, which includes the cities of Bellevue, Redmond and Kirkland, has the highest rates, 50-60 percent. Seattle rates pretty well, too. According to a July 1 news release from Mayor Greg Nickels' office, Seattle recycles 50 percent of its waste.

On Tuesday morning, Tom Watson, a project manager for King County Recycling and Environmental Services, dressed in a black-and-white referee's uniform for the event.

"We thought it would be fun for people to see what is recyclable and what isn't," Watson said.

Watson said food-waste products — milk cartons, meat and used napkins — are the most commonly found recyclables in Cedar Hills, the county's landfill.

"Half of what goes into the Cedar Hills landfill is sortable recyclables," he said. Food-waste products, when put into the landfill, release methane gas and damage the ozone, he said. These products are supposed to be placed in yard-waste bins for future composting.

Even though Kenneally's team came in last, she believes they all learned more about recycling.

"I always avoid recycling the food items, so this was a good way to learn about recycling them," she remarked.

Armando Montaño: 206-464-2347 or amontano@seattletimes.com