Recycling that Goes the Extra Mile

Recycling that Goes the Extra Mile

Recycling that Goes the Extra Mile

By Dawn Kane

 

The neat white Rabbit Recycling van stops at my curbside, and the driver, Meghan Sismour, takes the 44-gallon lidded container holding out household e-waste, batteries, and separately packaged light bulbs (to prevent breakage) and then pauses at the open door of the van. The vehicle, stacked from stem to stern with similar containers, doesn’t look like it can hold one more thing, but she finds a niche to accommodate the bin and my now-defunct desktop printer. 

In just a few years, Rabbit Recycling has gone from a grassroots neighborhood endeavor to a recycling service dedicated to paving the way for real recycling—not the wish-cycling that sends most of our trash to landfills and incinerators. (Link: https://www.rabbitrecycling.com/)

 According to a Columbia University report compiled from EPA data, in 2017 “Sixty-six percent of discarded paper and cardboard was recycled, 27 percent of glass, and 8 percent of plastics were recycled.” And this is before China closed its markets to US recyclables in 2018. (Link: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/03/13/fix-recycling-america/)

 And according to a January 28, 2020 article by Kevin Budris for the Conservation Law Foundation based in Boston, MA, “Despite many good intentions, curbside recycling has turned out to be a disaster. In 2017 alone, 5.9 billion pounds of plastic beverage containers were sold, but only about 333 million pounds were recycled into new containers. Nearly all of the remaining plastic bottles (more than 5 billion pounds) ended up buried in a landfill or burned in an incinerator – each of which releases toxic pollution into our communities.” (Link: https://www.clf.org/blog/curbside-recycling-is-failing-us/)

 This makes curbside recycling in most communities a miss or miss proposition. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Rabbit Recycling is an example of a service that’s trying to do things differently. Matt Siegfried, co-owner of the company, says that his brother, Bryan Siegfried, started the effort by sorting out recyclable materials in their Fairmont apartment building and taking them directly to end-use companies.

 Matt Siegfried joined in and helped his brother expand their reach into their Fairmont neighborhood and beyond. By the end of 2019, Rabbit Recycling had become a full time endeavor and during the pandemic the demand for their services only grew. Today they serve communities in Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs.

 “People didn’t trust the recycling system,” Siegfried says. “So, we found out that we could be an alternative.” The Siegfried brothers have built up the company to offer a holistic approach to recycling waste. For those living in the Philadelphia area, this means one can sign up as a subscriber, and after an initial fee for a recycling container, the pickup fees range from $14 to $22 for a 5-gallon or 18-gallon container respectively. If you donate items to Rabbit Recycling and want to know what happens to your things, Siegfried says, all you need to do is ask. “We believe in full transparency.”

 Rabbit Recycling seems to have a solution to most recycling problems. According to the company website, the company “hand sorts and inspects every item and material that enters our shop. After inspection, the materials are generally organized into five broad categories: commodity, donation, upcycle, specialty, and deconstruction.”

 Using this method prevents cross-contamination and ensures that the items actually make it to their intended use. For example, single-use plastic bags go directly to Trex Recycling, a company that turns the single-use bags into outdoor decking. (Link: https://www.trex.com/why-trex/eco-friendly-decking/)

In many municipalities glass bottles aren’t recycled in the quantity collected because many break in the machine sorting process, but the folks at Rabbit Recycling take bottles to Bottle Underground in the Bok building, much of which gets reused, or upcycled, or turned into sand and used in watershed protection projects to stabilize shorelines. (Link: https://www.bottleunderground.org/)

 Another Rabbit Recycling solution is to take specific types of plastic containers, grind it down to the granular level and deliver it to companies that use it as an additive in concrete, which cuts down on the carbon emissions.  Finally, the company encourages people and local charities to make an appointment to visit their Philadelphia shop and take donated items, such as clothing or household items like utensils, free of charge for reuse and upcycling. (Link: https://news.mit.edu/2017/fortify-concrete-adding-recycled-plastic-1025)

 So while this is wonderful for people living in the Philadelphia area, it’s not the only company doing this kind of work. In other areas around the state, similar organizations are taking on the recycling challenge. 

In the Pittsburgh area and Delaware County the Pennsylvania Resources Council holds recycling events to make sure your castaways get a second chance for their highest-best use. And that makes a difference. (Link: https://prc.org/)  A May 2023 Grid Philly article states “Reusing boxes doesn’t just save cardboard. According to a peer-reviewed study on the lifecycle of corrugated cardboard boxes published in Resources, reusing a cardboard box once instead of recycling right away cuts its lifecycle emissions by a third.” (Link: https://gridphilly.com/blog-home/2023/05/01/a-company-with-decades-of-reuse-experience-aims-at-zero-waste/)

Finally, And there are steps you can take personally to reduce waste. For example, if you’re swamped in junk mail, you can get off subscription lists and stop excess junk mail by sending out a few emails (Link: https://prc.org/blog/stopjunkmail/)

So, do you know a company in your area doing this work? Please write us and share so we can spread the word!