The state of recycling in Greenville is poised to become more difficult and complicated to maintain than it has in the past three years since the removal of glass from the stream.
Now, the city will be charged to dispose of its recyclable materials, where for the past decade it had been paid for it.
The result?
A potential new fee for curbside residential recycling, absent a further infusion into the millions the city already uses in tax money to subsidize overall trash disposal.
And those plastic materials like yogurt tubs and food trays that have been questionable? They're going into the landfill as of now.
The issue boils down to the private contractor that processes recyclables for Greenville and other cities locally, Pratt Industries, determining that recycling the materials simply isn't profitable.
“We want to be 100 percent transparent with our customers as to what we are collecting and what is being recycled and what is making its way into the landfill,” Public Works Director Mike Murphy said. “What are not promoting is that everything that can be recycled is being recycled.”
For now, the $111,000 impact of the change from making money off materials to being charged for them can be covered by the current city budget into the summer, Murphy said.
However, a decision will have to be made this summer how to handle the change moving forward that will increase the annual cost to the city by more than $240,000.
Right now, there are three options on the table — add in more to the $3.1 million in taxes the city uses to subsidize trash disposal, raise the city's monthly overall solid waste fee to residential customers or implement a recycling fee.
The new recycling fee could be between $1 to $3 a month and potentially could be charged only to those who recycle, Murphy said.
The city's curbside recycling program began in 1999 with 18-gallon green bins that required residents to sort materials.
In 2016, the city moved toward providing residents a single, 95-gallon bin where all types of recycled materials could be combined together.
However, that same year Pratt announced that it would no longer accept glass, and the city told residents to simply throw glass away.
The desire to recycle glass again has been a periodic discussion among leaders and the public ever since, but no sustainable solutions have been found.
Right now, Assistant Public Works Director Dave Derrick said, Pratt is "basically the only game in town."
Now, the category of plastics 3-7 — which includes the likes of yogurt tubs and food trays — are being disposed of in the landfill as there is currently no market to buy them, Derrick said.
The decreased market for glass and plastics is part of a larger trend across the country.
One factor is China's "National Sword" policy that it instituted in 2018, which drastically reduced the number of recyclables the country imports, said Mildred Lee, the city's solid waste manager.
However, the current market in what is a commodities industry could change, Murphy said.
For instance, the city isn't planning to stop collection of plastics 3-7, which represent only 3 percent of the waste it puts into landfills, he said.
That category is still listed on the city's website among the "accepted" materials.
“We think this is still a temporary process," Murphy said. "That’s why we don’t want to get rid of it."
And currently, the market for plastics 1 and 2 remain healthy, along with aluminum and steel cans, and corrugated cardboard, Derrick said.
Those profitable plastics generally include soda and water bottles, milk jugs, shampoo and cleaner bottles, and cooking oil and peanut butter containers.
As part of whatever shift will happen in the recycling program, the city plans to push a campaign to inform the public of what should be put in the recycle bin and what shouldn't, Murphy said.
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https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/local/greenville/downtown/2020/02/17/greenville-might-charge-new-city-recycling-fee-market-declines/4653715002/
2020-02-17 10:00:00Z
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