As of March 1, Athens, Tenn., residents may no longer be able to recycle plastics because of a recent price increase at the Orange Grove recycling center in Chattanooga.
Public Works director Calvin Clifton told City Council members at their monthly work session that on Jan. 1 the center installed a delivery fee of $504.13 per ton of plastics to be recycled. Before, the center only charged the city a transport fee of $50 per each 1,5000-pound load of plastics, according to local news reports. The city was shipping between 2,200-2,500 pounds of plastics a month to Orange Grove.
“We usually deliver about two loads of plastics a month,” said Clifton, “so we’re looking at a cost of about $800 a month that we’ve never had to budget for before.”
The city had been shipping its plastic containers, including PET and HDPE bottles, to the Orange Grove Center. However, a sharp decline in the price of plastics recently has made the processing and shipping of plastics cost prohibitive. According to William Wilcox, the sanitation foreman for the city, over the past two to three weeks, the price being paid for the plastics declined from $.16 to $.01 a pound.
While the city has been searching for other outlets, so far the city has been unable to find a home for the collected plastics within a 50-mile radius. The city is following other cities in the area that have decided to drop the collection of plastics due to the absence of markets for the material. Wilcox says the city of Athens is the last city in the county to still collect plastics. “Everyone else quit a long time ago.”
The city will stop collecting and shipping the plastics by March 2.