Kane County report: curbside diversion 30.8% as officials push recycling education and event pilots

Kane County solid-waste staff presented the county's 2024 curbside and commercial waste figures to the Energy and Environmental Committee on April 11, reporting a countywide residential diversion rate of 30.8% and outlining outreach work and upcoming events.

Claire Ryan, the county's solid-waste lead on the presentation, told the committee the haulers' reports show a residential curbside total of about 258,000 tons for the year, equal to roughly 1.35 tons per household and 7.38 pounds per household per day. On a per-person basis, Ryan said the number equates to about 2.7 pounds per person per day — a figure she said is essentially unchanged from the prior year.

"Overall, when you look at what was recycled or composted versus what was put in the landfill, our diversion rate is 30.8%," Ryan said. She added that municipal diversion varied widely across municipalities, with individual jurisdictions ranging from about 19% to 41% diversion.

Ryan used a volume analogy to illustrate scale: the county's curbside trash in 2024, if converted to unloaded 20-foot shipping containers (TEUs) without compaction, equaled roughly 28,200 TEUs — more than the capacity of the largest cargo ships in service last year. She also said recycling tonnage filled roughly 16,500 TEUs and that organics remained a small but heavy slice of the total at about 7.5%.

Commercial accounts reported by licensed haulers totaled 8,164, Ryan said, with fewer than half receiving recycling service and a commercial diversion rate of 19.2%. Construction and demolition debris reporting totaled about 60,500 tons, though Ryan cautioned that reporting for C&D and some backhauls is incomplete.

Ryan told the committee the county has been updating a time series of waste data back to pre‑pandemic years and that curbside trash volume has fallen to its lowest level since before COVID, despite a broader trend of increasing trash generation year over year and declines in recycling tonnage. She attributed part of the recycling decline to "lightweighting" — manufacturers using less material — and to changes in the composition of consumer goods rather than necessarily lower participation.

On program work, Ryan said staff will issue a bid to provide composting/hauling service for the county's Adult Justice Center and that the county continues partnerships around groundwater studies and the Geneva Creek restoration near the Judicial Center. She listed a series of spring and summer events, including a May 17 shredding event, pop-up recycling dates, and an Earth Day outreach appearance at Geneva Park District.

Committee members asked for and were told that contaminated recycling that fails at the material recovery facility is not captured in hauler-reported tonnage; the hauler scales report gross tonnage only, which can overstate final downstream diversion. Ryan noted the county's outreach work, including 15,000 distributed green guides and the launch of a Recycle Coach tool, and invited committee members to attend upcoming public events and tours of recycling facilities.

Ending

Ryan said staff will continue outreach to increase diversion, refine data collection (particularly for commercial and C&D streams), and return to the committee with results of the county's bid for hauling services for the Adult Justice Center.