If you purchase an ice cold coffee from your favorite coffee shop, that clear plastic cup and lid (minus the trashy straw and ice-y leftovers) is completely recyclable, but you'll have to schlep it home with you to actually get it recycled. 

For most Arlington residents, recycling bottles, cans and junk mail is pretty routine, except if you're visiting a local business. Recent online discussions about businesses that don't recycle have incorrectly assumed that business recycling should be easy, even free, but there are serious barriers for many business. This article hopes to bring clarity to the discussion.

Some small businesses, about 100+, participate in the Town's pay-as-you-throw orange commercial bag program. Each bag costs $2.30 and must be purchased in rolls of 10 at a time. Bags are available for purchase from DPW at 51 Grove Street, as well as our two essential business partners, Shattuck Ace Hardware and Wanamaker True Value Hardware. Businesses that voluntarily participate in this program are invited to place out their clean recycling alongside their orange trash bag. The cost of the orange bag covers the cost of the trash and recycling collection and processing. In fact, many communities in the Commonwealth are moving towards pay-as-you-throw programs for residential customers as well.

So why don't more businesses participate in the commercial bag program so that business patrons have an easier time finding a recycling bin? Many businesses choose not to, or are unable to, participate in the town's program. Participating business must place their trash on the curb the morning of the collection day, not before 6:00 AM, so that won't work for, say, a hair salon where the owner lives in Burlington and the business doesn't open until 10:00 AM. Also, businesses that serve food can't participate, per health codes.

All businesses share a similar set of considerations when deciding how recycling will affect their business operations:

• Cost: For businesses that pay for dumpsters or independent trash collection service, they will have to pay an additional fee for recycling, so it's cheaper to put everything out as trash
• Space: If you are going to separate out recycling, you are going to need space. Since businesses also want to stay in business, they have to make the important calculation about how to allocated their space- inventory vs. recycling storage. 
• Health Codes: Businesses that serve food and drink have a whole set of codes they must meet in order to keep patrons healthy and keep their health permits.
• Cost: Again with the costs, because, if you think about all the patrons who are going to recycling incorrectly, it's going to take staff time to re-sort and rinse all of that recycling. Time = money.

But isn't separating out the recycling the law? Yes, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, we are obligated to recycle, thanks to Waste Ban Laws that specify which recyclable materials must NOT be included with trash. In Arlington we also have bylaws which help this department enforce the state laws. Businesses that are included in our program have their trash and recycling enforced the same way as the residential trash and recycling is. However, policing business that use private haulers is challenging for municipalities. The state helps by spot-checking loads of trash as they get dumped at the incinerator. But each trash truck might contain waste from hundreds of businesses, so how is the business that didn't recycle realistically going to be identified? While it's up to the hauler to reject the waste if it has recycling in it, we can all imagine how difficult it would be to reject trash that you are being paid to take. Wouldn't the business just hire a different hauling company that didn't care so much if they recycled? 

What about the businesses that recycle in spite of all of these hurdles? They deserve our appreciation, and their practices likely reflect a leadership commitment to the environment that goes beyond simple economics.

What direction are laws and public policies heading? Colleges, universities, hospitals and prisons are now required, by state law, to go even further and separate their food scraps and pay to have them composted instead of trashed. Cities and Towns are developing Zero Waste Plans, which could mean more enforcement for residents and businesses, and could support new Extended Producer Responsibility laws that require manufacturers to take back and recycle products at the end of their "useful lives."

Of course, consumers choose where and how to spend our dollars. We have the choice to reduce our single-use consumption, which would reduce the need for convenient recycling-on-the-go. As long as we purchase that 12 oz. single serving juice, businesses will sell it to us, but we may have to carry the empty bottle home to get it recycled.

Arlington recycling coordinator Charlotte Milan is available to speak with community groups about Recycling Right, and you can reach her at 781-316-3108.