Buffalo in the ’90s: Starting a citywide recycling program

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

After a pilot program in the Delaware, Fillmore and Masten districts, Mayor James Griffin announced each of Buffalo’s 130,000 households would start receiving blue recycle bins 25 years ago this week.

Initially the city was collecting just cardboard and newspaper, with the hope of adding glass, metal and plastic soon. Businesses and apartment complexes were also left out of the first phase of Western New York’s first municipal recycling program, but added soon thereafter.

 

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Steve Cichon

Steve Cichon writes about Buffalo’s pop culture history. His stories of Buffalo's past have appeared more than 1600 times in The Buffalo News. He's a proud Buffalonian helping the world experience the city he loves. Since the earliest days of the internet, Cichon's been creating content celebrating the people, places, and ideas that make Buffalo unique and special. The 25-year veteran of Buffalo radio and television has written five books and curates The Buffalo Stories Archives-- hundreds of thousands of books, images, and audio/visual media which tell the stories of who we are in Western New York.