Why Does T'town Recycle Less than Hollow?

This week the county released recycling rates for every municipality and one big surprise might be the wide disparity between Tarrytown’s recycling rate with Sleepy Hollow’s. Sleepy Hollow comes in among the top in the county at 70 percent of its trash getting recycled, while Tarrytown only numbers 43 percent.

Interestingly, Tarrytown's DPW foreman attributes his village's lower rate to the greater number of apartment complexes.

Scott Weaver said 40 percent of Tarrytown’s population lives in residential apartment complexes, while Sleepy Hollow only has four complexes (Van Tassel, College Arms, and 126 and 124 Valley Street).

“With the apartment complexes which use dumpsters, it is much harder to enforce versus private homes,” Weaver said. “We have been working diligently with the County as well as the building managements to increase the recycling, but it takes time to educate and get people on board.”

Sleepy Hollow’s Gross says he on the other hand has the education efforts of the village to thank when costs at the trash plant are so high. And he adds Phelps Memorial Hospital into that "residential complex" rate so might beg to differ.

“The Village has over the past years been very informative to the residents as what the effect of recycling has on the cost of tipping fees at Charles Point,” Gross said. “The more recycling the less the Village pays to the County for solid waste.”

Did the disparity between the villages surprise you? Do these reasons of apartments/education seem sufficient? What other factors might be work here? Weigh in below.

Like us on Facebook  |  Follow us on Twitter  |  Sign up for our newsletter