Chris Doherty, director for the city’s Public Works and Utilities Department, told City Council this week that the city is currently faced with a doubled-edged effect from Oct. 1 legislation that banned plastic bottles, motor oil filters and wooden pallets from entering any North Carolina landfill.
“Since the most current landfill bans went into effect, our recycling participation has increased dramatically,” a comprehensive report presented by Doherty and the Public Works and Utilities Department stated. “This is both good and bad. The good is that we are diverting much more waste from the landfills, but the bad is that we are not properly equipped to handle the volume of material we are receiving at the convenience sites.”
The convenience sites are located on John Street (near Public Works), at the Beaman Street Fire Station and at Royal Lane Park. The increased use of the convenience sites coupled with the closing of Bryant’s Recycling, the city’s recycle material vendor, in mid-November, has compounded the issue.
How drastic is the issue?
After the city disseminated information about the bans, and asked anyone who needed a recycling bin to call Public Works, the response was “overwhelming,” Doherty said.
The department gave out more than 120 bins in a single week and had to spend $3,196 to buy more collection bins to meet the demand. At the same time, the department was inundated with calls and concerns regarding recycling — the phone hasn’t stopped ringing since.
Public works office staff receive approximately 30 to 50 calls each week from people with recycling questions, the department said. As the phone lines were bombarded, so were the convenience sites.
Doherty told Council there are three workers who now service the sites a minimum of three days per week, a task that takes two to four hours to collect and deliver materials. When the city received notice of Bryant’s Recycling’s intent to close, it contacted Waste Industries to supply a 40 cubic yard roll-off container, which is filled to the brim and hauled to a materials recovery facility in Fayetteville.
The current weekly cost to service the sites is nearly $1,400 a week, coming in at a minimum annual price tag of around $71,000. However, the use of the dumpster is a temporary measure to continue providing recycling service to local residents, department officials stated.
In the recycling report, there were other options floated. The options were not discussed by Council, which did not take any action during its meeting this week. The recycling issue, a possible move to curbside collection and the budget ramifications of any change, is expected to be a matter discussed leading up to next fiscal year’s budget.
Three possible options were included in the report to Council.
The first is a weekly residential curbside collection that would utilize a new recycling truck, a driver and collector. The recycling truck would have to be purchased and a collector hired, however the driver could be provided by way of a recent trash collection modification.
The second is curbside collection using the city’s automated vehicle, through which recyclables could be collected weekly or bi-weekly, according to the report. While no truck would have to be purchased, or additional employee hired, roughly 3,200 roll-out containers (65 gallon) would have to be purchased for the recycling.
According to the Public Works and Utilities Department, the cost for the first option would be $3.36 per month per household. The second would be $3.23 per month per household.
Curbside collection using a contractor is the third option, however the costs are not known as the service would have to be bid.
Doherty said another piece of heavy equipment and another employee was necessary to meet the demand, putting his recommendation behind the first option.
The bans from landfills imposed in October are not the first and will not be the last, the public works director noted. It is not an issue that will resolve itself, or go away, and city officials are now charged with finding the best way to recycle materials and collect them.
“(The newly banned materials) joined a laundry list of goods already banned from landfills,” Doherty said. Plastic bottles and other items joined a long list that already included used oil, yard waste, white goods, antifreeze, aluminum cans, whole scrap tires, lead acid batteries, beverage containers and oyster shells.
“Right now, what’s on the horizon is our next landfill bans in January 2011,” said Doherty, noting specifically discarded electronic equipment such as computers and televisions.
The city of Clinton, which began curbside recycling in 1993, began exploring other recycling options at the end of 2005 due to contractual issues, low participation and increased costs. The city’s estimated recycling participation rates at that time were around 15 to 20 percent, while other municipalities saw rates twice that — around 40 percent.
The city of Clinton and Waste Industries voided the parties’ curbside contract in 2006, with the city purchasing 3,000 small collection bins from the company as part of the deal. The igloo convenience sites were subsequently obtained from Wake County at no cost. Even when the convenience sites were first established, their utilization was a slowly-evolving process.
With landfill bans continuing and legislators passing greener measures, that has all changed.
“The demand for recycling keeps increasing (and) we have had to place out more cardboard dumpsters, and resident and businesses come in daily to get recycling bins,” Doherty stated. “It is our recommendation that we purchase a recycling collection vehicle, similar to the new garbage truck, and hire a collector to do curbside collection. We would also run cardboard collection twice a week.”
According to preliminary estimates, it would cost in the range of $175,000 for a new truck and $29,399 annually for a collector. Doherty said he realizes the costs associated with such a move, but some of that can be recouped by selling recyclables to the facility in Fayetteville.
The matter is expected to receive further discussion in the coming months.
“We will be discussing this as part of the budget,” city manager John Connet said.
Added Clinton Mayor Lew Starling, “This is a work in progress.”
Chris Berendt can be reached at 910-592-8137, ext. 121, or by email at sicrime@myclintonnc.com.
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