St. Louis Airport Doubles Recycling, Expands Program

St. Louis’ airport has doubled its recycling in the first six months of a new program, and is now adding more single-stream recycling containers.

Lambert-St. Louis International Airport said in a news release it is now recycling 20 percent of its waste. It was at 10 percent recycling from terminal and concourse operations before it partnered with Phoenix-based Republic Services Inc. to form a recycling program in March.

The airport said its overall recycling rate is higher when including other recycling programs such as construction waste, runway rehabilitation waste, equipment and scrap metal.

The airport now is adding dozens of combined single-stream recycling and waste containers for all public areas in the terminals, concourses and parking garages.

In March the airport increased the number of recycling containers on both the public and non-public sides and expanded to a single-stream collection system.

“The first phases of our program have been focused on improving recycling with our airlines and other airport business partners,” said Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge, airport director. “Now we’re reaching directly to our customers and passengers throughout the airport to make an even bigger impact on what we divert from the landfill.”

The airport also began a food recycling program in 2012 to convert waste to agricultural compost.