Collier County officials are celebrating a big increase in the rate of recycling. Last month, Collier County residents diverted more than 3-thousand tons of garbage from the landfill. That’s a 77-percent increase over November 2004. County Public Utilities Spokeswoman Margie Hapke says much of the spike is due to new, larger recycling bins. The carts can hold three times as much material as the old bins and every county resident got a new one in October. Hapke says it’s all about preserving the landfill.

“The longer that we can keep the landfill open and accepting just garbage. The longer we’re going to be able to control disposal costs. If we ever lose our landfill, disposal costs are just going to skyrocket.”

Hapke says the landfill is projected to reach capacity in 25 years...that’s far better than a few years ago when it was thought the landfill could only sustain two or three years. She says if Collier residents keep recycling at this rate, the life of the landfill will only get longer