Today's news is always more valuable than yesterday's, but never more so than now.

Starting today, the city of Pittsburgh will get $46.50 per ton for the newspapers bagged by residents for recycling, up 54 percent from the rate in a just-expired contract.

That boost, and a near-quadrupling of the payment the city receives for metals, glass and plastics that also takes effect today, are expected to double the city's 12-month take from recycling to $400,000.

It's all part of a recycling boom that helps the city more directly than other municipalities. That's because Pittsburgh is one of the few municipalities that owns its trash, rather than ceding it to a private hauler.

Newspapers, bottles and cans have been transformed from liabilities to assets.

"It wasn't but a few years ago when the city was paying to get rid of recyclable material," said William Klimovich, assistant director for the city's Bureau of Environmental Services.

He credits the shift to sharp negotiating, and the globalization of the recycled materials market.

The city's newspaper collections make up the bulk of the 500 tons of paper that flows through Atlas Waste Paper's South Side location each month. From there, it goes to plants that turn it into fresh newspaper, or insulation.

Atlas is able to pay the city more now than last year because of booming markets far away.

"China buys paper from all over the country," said Atlas supervisor Neil Kossis.

International demand is also driving the spike in prices for glass, metals and plastics, said Mr. Klimovich. Starting today, those items go to Hazelwood's Pittsburgh Recycling Services, rather than to the McKees Rocks vendor that has bought them for the last three years.

The new contract pays $41.06 per ton for glass, metals and plastics, up from $11.05 in the old deal.

"If we were to take this stuff to the landfill, we would be paying $19.28 a ton," Mr. Klimovich said. For the city that means the difference between a ton of cans in the regular trash and a ton in the requisite blue bags is $60.34.

He said around 65 percent of residents comply with its recycling laws. "This administration's goal is to bring it to 75 or 80 percent," he said. Violators can be fined, but usually aren't.

The 9,100 tons the city recycled last year was small in relation to the 109,000 tons it sent to landfills. That ratio lags behind municipalities like Cranberry, where nearly half of the waste is recycled, according to township Manager Jerry Andree. Cranberry includes yard waste in its recycling total.

Cranberry doesn't profit directly when recyclable materials prices go up. Its bottles and papers are the property of private hauler Vogel Disposal Services Inc. High recyclable materials prices might result in a cheaper hauling contract, Mr. Andree said, but not a windfall.

Cranberry gets a state Department of Environmental Protection grant based on the tonnage it recycles. So does the city, which hauled in $212,000 from that source last year.

The city's budget calls for spending $9.9 million on waste collection. The amount it expects to earn from recycling, including the state grant, equates to 17 refuse collectors' salaries.

Besides paying salaries, residents who put newspapers in paper bags or tied bundles and rinsed cans and bottles in blue bags are helping the environment, Mr. Klimovich said.

"It doesn't take much effort by residents to recycle," he said. "If we don't recycle, we're going to run out of landfill space."