LOCAL

City's recycling program could be in jeopardy

MARION — The city's recycling program may be in jeopardy, as the recycling industry continues to weather changes in the market. 

Sims Brothers Recycling, the company that takes and processes the recyclables that the city collects at the curb, may not accept the cans and cardboard boxes residents set at the curb after the year's end, Marion Mayor Scott Schertzer informed the Marion City Council on Monday.

"We have been made aware that the company that takes our recyclables may — and I stress ‘may’ — not be interested in taking them anymore primarily because there is no market for recyclables at this point in time, or I should say, a very diminished market," Schertzer said.

Phone calls and messages left with Sims Brothers officials on Tuesday and Wednesday were not returned by press time.

"Right now I can tell you that curbside pickup will continue to Dec. 31 of this year. After that ... we don't know yet," the mayor said.

Schertzer said that currently, Sims Brothers does not charge the city anything for taking its recyclables. 

Jenna Hicks, director of the solid waste district that includes Marion County, told the Star that Sims Brothers has asked the city of Marion to pay a processing fee on the recyclables it takes from the city.

"That's occurring across the United States. It's not out of line with what's happening in the rest of the world," Hicks said.

The news comes as changes in recycling markets have rattled the industry. In recent years, China, which imports much of the United States' waste, has imposed stricter standards on waste imports and has banned imports of certain waste.

On Jan. 1, China's ban on certain plastics and on unsorted, mixed papers went into effect, part of the country's environmental protection drive, according to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries.

These changes have led recyclers to scramble for other markets to take their bales of plastics, paper and other recyclables.

"Not a lot of our (residential recyclable) material goes to China, but what that's doing is it's flooding the markets," Hicks said. "So when the recycling markets are flooded, you don't get hardly any money out of your materials."

One of the most influential policies China has enacted, Hicks said, is a policy only to accept recyclables with a 0.5 percent contamination rate, meaning bales of recyclables with very little non-recyclable material mixed in. Recyclers try to sort out the non-recyclable materials that people throw into their recycling bins, but they don't catch everything.

"That's causing a lot of strife," Hicks said.

While evaluating the future of the city's recycling program, the city is considering a number of options, Schertzer said, including finding another company to take the city's recyclables at no cost, paying money to have a company take its recyclables or ending the city's recycling program.

The city collects about 800 tons of recyclables per year, according to Marion City Public Works Director Jim Bischoff.

Schertzer cautioned that if the city were to end its recycling program, Marion residents would still have access to recycling through drop-off containers provided by the Delaware, Knox, Marion, Morrow Joint Solid Waste District.

However, that would require residents to travel to a drop-off site to get rid of their recycling.

svolpenhei@gannett.com

740-375-5155

Tweet me @SarahVolp

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