GOP congressional candidate calls single-stream recycling a ‘sham’

By Catrina Barker | The Center Square contributor
The Center Square

(The Center Square) – Republican congressional candidate Angel Oakley says much of the material Americans place in recycling bins ultimately ends up in landfills, arguing the current single-stream recycling system is misleading taxpayers and consumers.

Oakley said contamination in single-stream recycling – where plastics, glass, paper and metal are combined in one bin – often makes materials unusable for recycling.

“A majority of them actually end up in the landfill, and that’s for plastics and also for glass,” Oakley said. “There are so many people that go out of their way to recycle. They think they’re doing a good thing … and yet it ends up in the landfill anyway, and it is costing us tax dollars.”

Oakley pointed to contamination problems caused by broken glass, improperly cleaned containers and plastic bags clogging sorting equipment. She said the shift to single-stream recycling was designed to increase participation rates but came at the expense of effectiveness.

“The way legislation is written, the EPA provides funding to local municipalities for recycling services, and then those municipalities contract with companies like Waste Management to provide that service,” Oakley said. “It’s more or less a checkmark – are you providing the service or not – but it’s not necessarily looking at the effectiveness of the recycled materials being reused.”

Oakley contrasted modern recycling programs with older systems that required residents to separate materials themselves or bring recyclables to designated facilities.

She also cited bottle deposit programs, such as those once used by Oberweis and those currently operating in states including California and Michigan, as examples of more effective reuse systems.

“One thing that we could benefit from is having a national deposit program,” Oakley said, arguing a federal system could prevent cross-border abuse that can occur between states with different bottle deposit laws.

While Oakley said recycling reform is not among her top campaign priorities, she described environmental stewardship as an area where Republicans and Democrats can find common ground.

“It is ultimately part of our land stewardship, which is incredibly important just in general as far as keeping our air, water and soil preserved for our children in the future,” she said.