Recycled Glass Gets Trashed in Texas

Lack of markets causing more glass to be shipped to landfill.

 

More than 1 million pounds of recycled trash collected as part of the city of Corpus Christi, Texas' curbside program ended up in a landfill because there's no place for it to go. All the recycled material that ended up in the dump was glass that residents sorted, cleaned and placed on their curbs thinking it would come back to them as another bottle or jar.

From Jan. 1 to Sept. 30, glass accounted for nearly 20 percent of the total volume of recycled material - 1,141,390 pounds. Most was buried in that landfill. The rest was crushed and used to build roadbeds within the landfill.

"We can't afford to process it and sell it," said Mickey Shuford, district vice president for Browning-Ferris Industries, the company that handles all the city's residential recycling and runs the landfill. "Our people have not been able to sell it, and we've got to get it out of here."

Shuford said his company plans to ask the city to stop collecting glass as part of its recycling program, following a trend that has spread across the country.

"I'm not going to tell them we're recycling," he said. "If the city continues the recycling program, we're going to ask them to take glass out of the process."

The only recycled commodity to outpace glass in the city's curbside recycling program during that same collection period was paper - 1,818,702 pounds of mixed paper and 3,260,770 pounds of newspaper. Because paper can be resold at a good price, BFI will continue to collect it.

The possibility of ending glass recycling comes just as city officials are trying to save the entire residential recycling program.

During the past five years, the number of people setting out their bins and the amount of recyclable material collected by city trucks has steadily declined, meaning more trash that could be reused is instead ending up in the landfill.

In 1997, the city collected 6,338 tons of recyclable trash, and the set-out rate for bins was about 32 percent. Last year, collections dropped to their lowest point during the past 10 years - 4,835 tons of recycled trash collected and a participation rate of about 25 percent.

According to the most recent numbers available for this year, the city has collected 3,355 tons and has estimated a participation rate of about 23 percent.

City council members have said that if that rate does not improve, they will be forced to consider ending the recycling program.

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An elevated cab is one of several features improving operational efficiency at the Macon County Solid Waste Management agency in North Carolina. When it comes to waste management, efficiency, safety and reliability are priorities driving decisions from day one, according to staff members of the Macon County Solid Waste Management Department in western North Carolina. The agency operates a recycling plant in a facility originally designed to bale incoming materials. More recently, the building has undergone significant transformations centered around one machine: a SENNEBOGEN telehandler (telescopic handler).

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SENNEBOGEN 340G telehandler improves the view in Macon County, NC

An elevated cab is one of several features improving operational efficiency at the Macon County Solid Waste Management agency in North Carolina. When it comes to waste management, efficiency, safety and reliability are priorities driving decisions from day one, according to staff members of the Macon County Solid Waste Management Department in western North Carolina. The agency operates a recycling plant in a facility originally designed to bale incoming materials. More recently, the building has undergone significant transformations centered around one machine: a SENNEBOGEN telehandler (telescopic handler).

Sponsored Content

SENNEBOGEN 340G telehandler improves the view in Macon County, NC

An elevated cab is one of several features improving operational efficiency at the Macon County Solid Waste Management agency in North Carolina. When it comes to waste management, efficiency, safety and reliability are priorities driving decisions from day one, according to staff members of the Macon County Solid Waste Management Department in western North Carolina. The agency operates a recycling plant in a facility originally designed to bale incoming materials. More recently, the building has undergone significant transformations centered around one machine: a SENNEBOGEN telehandler (telescopic handler).

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SENNEBOGEN 340G telehandler improves the view in Macon County, NC

An elevated cab is one of several features improving operational efficiency at the Macon County Solid Waste Management agency in North Carolina. When it comes to waste management, efficiency, safety and reliability are priorities driving decisions from day one, according to staff members of the Macon County Solid Waste Management Department in western North Carolina. The agency operates a recycling plant in a facility originally designed to bale incoming materials. More recently, the building has undergone significant transformations centered around one machine: a SENNEBOGEN telehandler (telescopic handler).

Councilman Henry Garrett said he wants to have a discussion about the future of the program as soon as the council reconvenes this month. He said it should be a priority before the April election and before a new council takes control. He was not aware that so much recycled trash was ending up in the landfill.

It costs BFI about $125 to sort through each ton of recycled trash. It then pays about $25 per ton of glass to ship the glass to the mills. Earlier this month, the market paid only $25 per ton to buy clear and amber glass from collectors such as BFI, meaning the mills are not paying BFI enough to cover the processing and shipping costs.

Jeff Kaplan, director of the city's solid waste department, said the problem with recycling glass is one of basic economics: Supply has exceeded demand. The only way to change that is for cities and states to create a more stable market for glass by increasing the demand and making it profitable to recycle.

Other states, such as California, have done that by offering low-interest loans and grants to companies that locate within specific recycling zones and manufacture using recycled materials from that zone. Each zone allows its cities and towns to join efforts. Times-Caller (Corpus Christi, Tex.)

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