A comment frequently heard and seen on social media about city operations is a complaint about the city eliminating glass from the residential recycling program.
Greensboro has continued to recycle glass but no longer accepts glass in the brown residential recycling bins. For residents to have their glass recycled, they have to take the glass to one of the many glass recycling drop off locations in Greensboro, which it is far more time consuming than throwing bottles and jars in the recycling bin and wheeling it out to the street.
Those who think that bottles and jars in their residential recycling bin get recycled are operating under a misconception. Those bottles go to the landfill but simply take a more circuitous and expensive route than if they were simply placed in the residential garbage bin.
Even without recycling residential glass, in the 2021-2022 budget the cost of recycling for Greensboro increased $750,000. In other words, the city had to pay an additional $750,000 to have the recycler haul off the products that can be recycled – like paper, plastic and cans.
Up until 2016, Greensboro was being paid $30 a ton for recyclable material, and in 2016 that price was dropped to $15 a ton but the contract was extended. However, since 2019 the city has had to pay for each ton of recyclable material it produces.
The $750,000 in additional expense is the result of a three-year contract. The first year the city paid $30 a ton for recyclables, the second year it was $60 a ton and in the upcoming year the cost is $90 a ton.
That is a huge change in the cost of recycling from being paid $15 a ton to paying $90 a ton, but it is a much better deal than many cities have.
When glass was being recycled it made up about 25 percent of the city’s recyclables by weight. Since, at the time, the city was being paid per ton, it made economic sense to continue to include glass in the recycling stream. However, now that the city is paying $90 per ton, eliminating glass keeps recycling costs down.
We used to recycle everything and take it to one of the nearby fire stations with bins. But when they stopped having those bins and told us to take it to the recycling center, one trip was enough. When we got out of our car, we had to walk on greasy slimy floors of the warehouse where they were dumping trash. Since that wasted two pair of shoes, so that was our last time to recycle.
Want us to recycle again? Put the recycling bins back at the fire departments.
The fire departments don’t need to deal with the broken glass, trash, slimy mess that is left by people who aren’t pristine recyclers. Those less than ideal recyclers created huge problems at fire stations that don’t need to return. Perhaps we need to stop recycling since it’s no longer a financially reasonable thing to do and just have trash.
John, with the city having to pay so much for someone to take our recycling is the city looking at the total value of the recycling program?
The City Council has looked at it and decided to continue. The price of recylables reportedly is rising which is good news. Greensboro had a sweet deal on recycling because of a decision the Council made years ago and that sweetness has finally gone away.
Did I read correctly that glass goes in a landfill, just like garbage? It’ll be there for millions of years, perhaps to be moved south during the next ice age.
In New Jersey, glass is crushed into the asphalt used in paving highways. It makes the highway reflective to headlights. I also wears out your tires more quickly.
I am less than appalled.
We pay the city to remove waste, costly or not. We pay for it. One of the prime functions of the city like infrastructure, police, fire, schools……
When I roll my trash can to the curb I voluntarily surrender ownership of its contents. What the city or garbage company does with it is no longer any concern of mine. They are free to weed through it and extricate whatever items they wish, for whatever purpose they wish.
But they do not have the right to compel me to engage in some ridiculous charade of quizzically classifying the rubbish (unless they pay me for doing so).
Therefore I just chuck it all in the trash. I pay my taxes – let them work to play their silly games.