The new recycling center in the Givat Shaul neighborhood of Jerusalem is fairly quiet on a crisp winter afternoon. Several people drive in to drop off their recycling — from old printers and batteries to aluminum pans, plastic containers and cardboard — in bins clearly labeled for each type of material.
These people, however, are the outliers.
Most Jerusalemites don’t recycle at all. The city has no curbside recycling program and, as in the rest of the country, recycling is not mandatory.
“In the State of Israel, we’re used to just dumping our garbage,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Environmental Protection said. “We’re a developing country, and everything else was more important, like security and defense; the environment just wasn’t at the top of the list. But now that’s changing.”
The ministry received a relatively large influx of cash from the state budget last year — approximately $74 million — that helped pay for new recycling sorting facilities, bins for composting in certain cities and environmental education.
It may be a long road ahead, but proponents of recycling say that little by little, Israelis are learning to become more conscious of their environment.
Israel started its recycling program in 1999 with plastic-bottle recycling cages on street corners. It began as a project of several youth movements and later was adopted by municipalities. The government also implemented a deposit law for beverage containers.
About 41 percent of plastic bottles were recycled in 2011, according to Chagit Hoshen, the marketing manager of ELA Recycling, the nonprofit organization that handles recycling collection countrywide. Once the rate reaches 50 percent, the organization says it will build a factory for the production of plastic bottles containing 40 percent recycled raw materials.
It’s not just bottles.
The government is spending some $90 million on trial recycling programs for composting — separating wet and dry garbage — in 31 towns and cities, including infrastructure and local education.
It will be a while before Israelis in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem separate their garbage for curbside pickup, because those cities still haven’t developed the infrastructure or budget for it. But they are moving ahead with composting.
Jerusalem has more than 20 communal composting gardens where residents can learn about gardening and bring their waste to be composted.
Oded Meshulam, who teaches seminars on compost and makes and sells composters, says it is important “because wet, heavy garbage is a significant addition to the landfill.”
Modi’in, a city of some 75,000 between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, is one of the cities that is embracing composting.
With an environmentally aware population and the physical infrastructure to succeed, including large garbage-collection rooms in apartment buildings and houses, as well as success in recycling paper and bottles, “we knew we wanted to cooperate,” said Eyal Shani of the city’s municipal environmental unit.
Modi’in is also home to “Hava and Adam,” an eight-acre ecological farm whose name is a play on Adam and Eve, as well as on the Hebrew word “hava,” or farm. Established by local educators, environmentalists and social activists as an ecological educational center, the farm aims to live by example and has always composted, recycled or built with all of its waste materials.
When Modi’in began planning its recycling program, it was clear that Hava and Adam would be involved in teaching residents how to separate their waste at the source.
Beginning last spring, the farm and municipality began gathering forces, finding people who were interested in learning and teaching kids and parents how to separate trash at home, using the brown composting bins being handed out by the city.
“When kids see me on the street they yell, ‘Brown bin, brown bin!’ ” said Jo Maissel, a tour guide and mother of three who now goes to classrooms and private homes to teach them how to use the bins. “My son calls me a ‘rubbish teacher.’ ”
There have been glitches, such as too much liquid gathering at the bottom of the bins (they advise putting a newspaper at the bottom), or confusion among the blue, brown and green bins in the communal garbage rooms, but residents mostly seem willing to take on composting.
Modi’in is an unusual case, however. A wealthy town near the center of the country, it is investing approximately $400,000 per year for the program, on top of the $2.6 million or so it spends each year on sanitation removal. Many cities don’t have that kind of money, or the will, to devote to recycling.
“It’s a project that requires a change of behavior,” Shani said, “and that will be a big part of its success.”