Remember when Cleveland took all its recycling to the landfill?

• The city's contract with its recycling vendor had expired, and program costs were skyrocketing alongside contamination levels — nonrecyclable material mixed with recycling.

Friction point: Mayor Frank Jackson didn't share any of this with the public before Fox 8 found out, meaning residents had been dutifully sorting their solid waste for nothing.

The big picture: The recycling market tightened nationwide in 2019, after China stopped accepting materials like plastic and mixed paper products.

What happened: Cleveland relaunched its curbside recycling program in 2022 on an opt-in basis with a new vendor and an expanded list of acceptable recycling items.

• As of 2024, nearly 80,000 residents had signed on.

💭 Sam's thought bubble: This was a significant scandal for Mayor Jackson, who had long paid lip service to sustainability efforts.

• Jackson's "defeatist market pragmatism sure doesn't sound like the rhetoric we should expect from elected leaders in The Green City on a Blue Lake," I wrote at the time.
• "In addition to the flagrant transparency issues ... Jackson's remarks lend the impression that Cleveland only cares about sustainability when it's profitable to do so."