Recycling Battle Heating Up in Michigan County

A public recycling agency in Oakland County has a new competitor for what most people consider trash: old newspapers.

The new player is North America's largest maker of newsprint -- Montreal-based Abitibi-Consolidated -- which has entered metro Detroit's recycling market, offering cash to schools and churches that collect old newsprint and other paper.

But the Abitibi-Consolidated collection bins could rob valuable newsprint from the recycling stream of communities that already recycle, said officials with the Southeast Oakland County Resource Recovery Association -- a major trash-disposal authority in south Oakland County. The company counters with studies it says show that its Paper Retriever program hasn't hurt public recycling programs in seven other states.

At a meeting today in Royal Oak, representatives of 12 cities in SOCRRA will discuss how to keep Abitibi-Consolidated's Paper Retriever program out of south Oakland County's schools and churches.

Anna Collinson, recycling coordinator for Royal Oak, said she talked Royal Oak schools out of adopting the Paper Retriever program last summer.

"We see it as a concern to our communities because we earn credits for every ton of recycling we contribute to SOCRRA," Collinson said. Newsprint amounts to about 75 percent of Royal Oak's recycling tonnage, she said.

Because schools and churches don't throw out much newsprint, "A lot of the Abitibi literature promotes this as a community service by encouraging parents and grandparents to bring newspaper from home," Collinson said.

SOCRRA pays its communities $17 a ton for newsprint and other recyclables -- two to three times more than Paper Retriever, said SOCRRA General Manager Jeff McKeen. A spokesman for Paper Retriever said it pays a varying rate "up to $15 a ton" based on how much the school or church collects.

A new Paper Retriever bin was welcomed this fall by students in the Earth Smart club at Lamphere High School in Madison Heights. The school's first collection day is today, said principal Jim Baker.

"We were looking for a way our kids could recycle without driving somewhere," Baker said.

Few schools and churches recycle paper, and the nation sends about half of its newsprint to landfills, according to the American Forest and Paper Association.

Abitibi-Consolidated needs that paper for its paper mills, said company spokesman Ben Walker.

The company's 10-year-old Paper Retriever program has 10,000 bins around the nation, collecting newsprint, office paper and junk mail. Trash paper will be shipped to Ontario for processing, he said. Detroit Free Press