Two Louisville neighborhoods have been selected to participate in a pilot program designed to encourage recycling.Residents of Louisville’s Cloverleaf and Portland neighborhoods are getting bigger recycling bins. The two neighborhoods are part of a pilot program made possible through a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies.Metro Public Works spokeswoman Lindsay English says the goal is to see if 95-gallon wheeled bins that are similar to the city’s trash cans will make people more likely to recycle.“What’s going to happen is over a six month period of time we’re going to track all the information, the volume of materials recycled, and see if just by simply putting a larger container in homes, if that’s going to increase people’s recycling habits,” she said.Any resident of the Urban Services District can buy a bigger recycling cart for $50, even if they aren’t in the pilot program neighborhoods. English says if the bigger carts do increase recycling, the long-term goal is to study the feasibility of introducing them to every neighborhood in the Urban Services District.With help from the Bloomberg Philanthropies grant, Louisville aims to increase recycling 25 percent within three years and divert 90 percent of solid waste from landfills over the next three decades.
