To improve its recycling rate, Carroll County has turned to Harford County — which boasts the highest recycling rate in the state — for ideas.

Harford residents may drop off clothing, antifreeze, oil, paper, tires, batteries, yard trimmings and computers for recycling for free.

“Having a waste-to-energy facility in no way hurts your recycling rate,” Harford County Recycling Manager Robert Ernst said at a forum on garbage held jointly Saturday by Carroll and Frederick counties.

Harford’s recycling rate is 56 percent, compared with Carroll’s 30 percent.

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In an effort to encourage greater participation, Carroll started allowing single-stream recycling this month so residents don’t have to bother sorting paper, glass and cans.

Residents and government officials need to view waste as a resource, said Richard Brandes, chief of the waste minimization branch of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“Waste should be an antique concept because almost everything is useful,” he said.

Brandes praised waste management practices in Montgomery County, where 45 percent of waste is recycled, 45 percent is burned to produce energy and the rest is landfilled.

But one Montgomery official told Sally Sorbello, a Sierra Club member, that its recycling rate of 36 percent could double if it weren’t for its waste-to-energy plant, also called an incinerator, which demands a certain amount of trash to keep going.

Fairfax County, Va.’s recycling rate is 35 percent but it recently launched a program to encourage more paper and cardboard recycling to boost that rate, said Pamela Gratton, recycling director of Fairfax, which also operates an incinerator.

Communities with waste-to-energy plants have an average recycling rate of 33 percent, slightly higher than the 28 percent national average, according to the Solid Waste Association of North America.

kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com