Recycling costs likely going up

Gastonia residents won’t see any direct increases in the cost of curbside recycling in the coming months.

But the city likely will. And officials say unless people stop attempting to recycle things that should just be thrown away – either due to ignorance or downright apathy – Gastonia could eventually amend or even do away with the service it now offers.

“Right now, everything’s on the table,” said DeeDee Gillis, the city’s solid waste division director. “I always see Gastonia having some type of recycling program for its residents, but what form that comes in will be totally market-driven going forward.

“There is a breaking point where it’s no longer going to be feasible for us to keep recycling in this manner.”

The problems facing Gastonia with respect to single-stream recycling are the same ones seen in communities across the United States. One is the widespread tendency people have to recycle incompetently or throw outright garbage into the recycle bins they pull to the curb for collection. Another is the volatile market for recyclables that has been in a nosedive since China stopped accepting recycled material in early 2018, due to consistently high amounts of contamination.

Trash vs. recyclables

Gastonia uses its own workers and equipment to pick up garbage. Customers who receive curbside service pay a solid waste collection fee of $8.50 per month.

That only foots a fraction of the total cost of solid waste collection, Gillis said.

“If we were to do a pass-through fee for what it costs to run all of our operations of solid waste, from garbage and yard waste to recycling, you’d be talking about a fee of roughly $18 per month per household,” she said.

The city also offers curbside recycling, but pays for the service exclusively using property taxes, without tying any of the cost to a user fee.

Republic Services collects curbside recycling for the city. Under the current contract, the city pays the company $2.54 per household per month to collect the material, which equates to $715,000 per year.

Proposed cost increase

Gastonia still has two years left on its contract with Republic Services. But a proposal being considered now would amend that, resulting in the city paying $3.54 per household per month. That would be $1 more per household, increasing the city’s annual cost to $997,000, based on roughly 23,150 customers who receive the service.

Language in the current contract allows Republic to reject collected material and recover the total cost of the disposal from the city if it consistently picks up things that aren’t recyclable. Gillis said Republic will likely begin taking advantage of that in the near future, to minimize its own financial losses, unless the city renegotiates the existing deal.

If the city agrees to pay more, Republic will strike the language that allows it to reject material and recover those costs.

“Knowing that the current contract allows them to charge us for contamination, we feel it’s in the city’s best interest to pay that fixed cost,” said Gillis. “Because it’s harder to budget for miscellaneous invoices and expenses that might come in.”

Bad habits

Gastonia’s cause for concern with regard to its recycling costs is based on months of scrutiny.

“We’ve been meeting with Republic for the past nine months,” Gillis said.

One of those meetings involved Gillis and other city officials traveling to the Materials Recycling Facility that Republic Services operates in Conover, where material collected in Gastonia is taken. There a series of conveyor belts, magnets and drop chutes separate a never-ending line of plastics, paper and cans. Human workers are critical in pulling out contaminants as they come down the line, but they simply can’t grab all the trash or soiled recyclables that tend to make their way into the stream.

Over a period of six days, Gastonia officials took part in a ‘contamination audit,’ and saw firsthand that material being recycled by Gastonia residents included “an excessive amount of contamination,” Gillis said.

“We saw plastic bags, garden hoses, yard waste, laundry baskets, construction debris, Styrofoam, air conditioners, microwaves, toaster ovens,” she said. “We even saw the bumper of a car.”

Education efforts

Beginning in July, Gastonia will ask local residents to stop putting glass bottles and jars and mixed paper in curbside recycling bins. Glass containers tend to break and mixed paper tends to get wet, which renders such material unrecyclable. "Mixed paper" refers to phone books, magazines, junk mail, office paper, paperboard packaging, or any kind of paper that isn't corrugated cardboard or newspaper.

Gastonia also plans to partner with Gaston County, Belmont, Mount Holly, Lowell and Ranlo on a grant-funded campaign to educate people about responsible recycling. The goal will be to turn the negative tide of bad recycling habits that has been swelling for years, Gillis said.

Ideally, some progress will be made that will benefit Gastonia before it needs to sign a new contract with Republic Services in 2021, she said.

“What we’re finding is there’s a direct relation between contaminated recyclables and increased cost,” she said.

Any successful recycling program in the future will have to be sustainable, Gillis said.

“We’re trying to find something that’s going to work past my generation and into the next generation,” she said.

You can reach Michael Barrett at 704-869-1826 or on Twitter @GazetteMike.

Key things not to do when you recycle

1. No plastic bags — They’re hard to remove from other recyclables, and when they get caught in the mechanical sorter, the whole system often has to be shut down to pull them out.

2. No food or chemical residue — Bottles and jars with remnants of ketchup, jelly, peanut butter or the like can’t be recycled. Either clean them out, or throw them away. Give a good rinse of water to things such as plastic bottles, cartons or cans that held food, chemicals or cleaning detergents.

3. Don’t bag things up — Recyclables need to be loose to be sorted.

4. No Styrofoam — Republic Services is not equipped to handle styrofoam.

5. Lots of other no-nos — Other items not acceptable for curbside recycling include electrical cords, clothing, household glass and windowpanes, medicine bottles, shredded paper, scrap metal, car parts, batteries, garden hose and ceramics. Beginning in July, Gastonia residents will be asked to stop recycling glass containers and mixed paper. That means the only paper products you should recycle will be corrugated cardboard and newspaper.

For more information on what is and isn’t recyclable, log on to cityofgastonia.com/recycling.