WMU discusses recycling programs

February 03, 2012|By Katie Perkowski | The Winchester Sun

The Winchester Municipal Utilities Commission heard a presentation from a Bluegrass Regional Recycling Corporation representative Thursday who told them that community members need to be better educated on recycling before the Holiday Hills project is expanded to other areas.

WMU collects recyclables from a pilot curbside recycling program in the Holiday Hills neighborhood and from its drop off center on Maple Street. All collected recyclables are taken to the BRRC’s recycling facility in Lexington to be sorted. BRRC then pays the utility for recyclable goods turned in.

Mickey Mills, executive director of BRRC, presented commissioners with audits of the Holiday Hills project and the drop off center. The audits were made from random samples of 40-yard compactor boxes that WMU took to Lexington, said WMU general manager Mike Flynn. According to the audits, 11.33 percent of what was turned in from Holiday Hills was glass, and 19.17 percent was trash. From the drop off center, 35.22 percent was glass and 10.65 percent was trash. Through education, the commission and WMU should work to lower those numbers, Mills said.

Trash is anything that does not match into categories that the BRRC sells from the Lexington recycling facility, he said.

Mills called the trash and glass “losers in our waste stream” because they both cost the utility about $42 per ton to get rid of. The market for recycled glass is not there anymore, he said.

“Glass is a material that you’re paying $42 a ton to process. I’m having to pay $10 a ton to have it recycled in Atlanta, Ga.,” he said. “We’re dropping glass off … we’re sending it to Atlanta and paying $10 a ton to get rid of it. I’m looking at an economic disadvantage to our program right now.

“I’m saying that 11 something percent is a loser in our waste stream as far as taking it and having the burden on public expenses to do that. It’s cheaper to take it and throw it in a landfill at $26 a ton …”

WMU commissioner Betty Berryman said starting the recycling programs was not about making money, but about doing the right thing and starting a new mindset in the community to recycle.

Mills told commissioners to look at implementing more educational programs for the public on recycling before expanding the Holiday Hills program to other areas. Flynn agreed that there needs to be more done to educate the community on recycling.

“All people involved in the recycling process need to be better educated,” he said.

Flynn said that it would be the decision of the commission and the public to have WMU stop collecting glass, and he echoed Berryman’s point about the reason for recycling in the community.

“The benefit in the long run is you’re saving landfill space and you’re doing the right thing,” he said.

He said taking glass out of the recycling programs would be a change, but based on the presentation, it’s going to be something the commission and WMU will have to discuss.

In other business, commissioners changed the regular meeting time of the commission to 5:30 p.m. beginning with their Thursday, Feb. 16 meeting.

Contact Katie Perkowski at kperkowski@winchestersun.com or follow her on Twitter, @TheSunKatie.

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