Despite estimates that it would save the city as much as $21.4 million in trash-disposal costs, Philadelphia has one of the worst residential recycling rates among major cities - 7.3 percent.
Carlton Williams, deputy commissioner of the Streets Department, said yesterday that Hicken had left the city on good terms and with great reluctance.
"Joan saw another opportunity that she wanted to take. It was a very difficult decision, but she wanted to fulfill her career goals elsewhere," he said.
He said that he was "saddened to see her go," and that both Hicken and the department were pleased with her work here.
Williams said Hicken was moving to Florida, but he did not know to which city or what job. He said he did not have contact information for her.
The Inquirer's attempts to reach Hicken were unsuccessful.
The city's first recycling coordinator, Maurice Sampson 2d, noted with chagrin what seems like a revolving door for recycling coordinators - five in two decades.
"I was dismissed. Al Dezzi was ignored. Joan Batory was invisible. David Robinson was indicted," he said, ticking them off chronologically. "Are we going to shoot the next one? What is the sequence of events here?"
Hicken was hired in March 2006 from a similar job in Glendale, Ariz. There, she had introduced single-stream recycling, considered more user-friendly because all recyclables can be put into one bin instead of separate containers.
Now, however, recycling advocates see Hicken's tenure as a case of misalignment - a person with expertise and enthusiasm brought into a department whose leaders did not believe recycling on a broad scale was either doable or, perhaps as a consequence, a priority.
"I like to say that our trash system is the most modern you could have - in 1975," said Sampson, now head of a Philadelphia company, Niche Waste Reduction and Recycling Systems Inc.
