"Ultra-green Seattle" sorts through recycling options
[PlanetArk]: Fourteen years after setting an ambitious goal to recycle 60 percent of its garbage by 2008, ultra-environmentally conscious Seattle is wondering whether it can finish the job - and what it would take.
With its recycling rate stalled at about 40 percent of its total trash haul, officials in the Emerald City... are acknowledging the plan may have been too optimistic.
Seattle is already well ahead of the 30 percent U.S. national recycling average.... But getting to 60 percent could mean sending another truck to pick up food scraps - which make up about 20 percent of total waste - or offering free curbside service to businesses, which now mostly use optional private recycling services.
Alameda County CA (Oakland, Berkeley and other cities), where we're working with the county's StopWa$te program, is at 55% diversion.
Some communities in New Zealand and elsewhere are seriously talking about 100%.
5:36:23 PM 
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