I wasn't sure what kind of reaction I'd get from Bob Coyle, vice president of public affairs for waste management company Republic Services of Southern Nevada, when I told him that, based on my experience, no one believes that waste is recycled in Las Vegas. Not the Las Vegas taxi driver I talked to as I was headed for the airport. Not my college buddy who lives in Vegas. Not even some of my fellow attendees at the Waste Expo conference at the Las Vegas Convention Center. As it turns out, that's hardly news to Coyle.
"That's one of my biggest challenges," he says. "And the residential [recycling] system is antiquated, at best."
Republic Services of Southern Nevada, which has an exclusive contract for waste collection and disposal in Las Vegas, collects trash twice a week from 515,000 residential customers in the area, and brings about 9500 tons of waste per day to the Apex Regional Landfill, located 25 miles north of Las Vegas. It also offers recycling services and operates a municipal material recovery facility (known as a MRF in waste circles) where recyclables are collected, sorted and bailed before being sold and shipped to converters in the US and aboard. But rather than being collected twice weekly, along with the trash, recyclables are only collected twice a month.
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