We foretold this.  

Well, maybe not so much “foretold” as casually brought it up randomly at one point last year.

In a post last August about our love/hate relationship with our big blue recycling bins, I noted, if I may quote myself…

…glass is already a questionable recyclable commodity.  It has little value to recyclers and a lot of it gets broken in transit.  Mixed with other recyclables, broken glass leads to contamination of other items and makes them um, un-recyclable.

Then, right on cue, at the beginning of year some metro Atlanta communities stopped accepting glass recycling.

Decatur Asst. City Manager David Junger told the AJC around that time that the city would continue to accept glass in our one-stop-shop bins, but the writing seemed to be on the wall.  At the time, Mr. Junger noted the city was looking at every possibility for the most unwanted member of the recycling family.  We summarized the options thusly…

• Stop recycling glass (and send it to the landfill)
• Have Latham collect glass separately
• Have the city collect glass separately
• Set up drop off locations in the city for glass recycling

Now the chickens are coming home to roost.  (Man…a lot of metaphors in this post.)

Decaturish reports that “Pratt Industries of Conyers, Ga. has informed the city that effective June 1 it will no longer accept recycling materials that contain glass.”  The city has a few months to decide what to do.

So what should we do?

According to Mr. Junger, every option will cost more – including taking it to the landfill.  Are you up for separating glass and recycling it at the curb?  Do you want to make separate trips to recycling locations around the city to dispose of your empties?  Do you just want to chuck it all in your Decatur-bespeckled trash bags?

The city wants your feedback.

Decatur takes great pride in its trash and recycling programs.  In the city’s recent Citizen Survey, residents gave both Garbage Collecting and Recycling a 91% positive rating.

That’s good because recently, recycling has gotten more expensive for residents.  The city is now paying almost $13 more a ton (from $76 to $89) for recycling because demand for recycled materials is way down.

As Asst. City Manager David Junger wrote at the Sept. 2nd commission meeting that “post-consumer recyclable commodity prices have dropped significantly due to depressed manufacturing and housing industries, unstable market conditions, and changes to international recyclable commodity markets, especially in Asia.”  Junger goes on to note that “the value of single-stream, post consumer recyclable materials have settled at a price which is producing marginal revenue.”

But as we’ve discussed over the years, recycling is never as easy or as net-positive for the planet as we often want/hope it to be.  For example: In past discussions we’ve learned that you shouldn’t leave your open recycling out in the rain, because wet paper, cardboard and chipboard can’t be recycled if it’s soaked.

Now throw this recent observation into the mix.

The Atlantic reports that single-stream recycling – throwing everything in one bin – “is, ultimately, more expensive than sorting things before they got to the dump, and MRFs can’t separate recyclables quite as well as a system that never mixes them together to begin with.”

This is apparently especially an issue with glass.  Quoting the Container Recycling Institute from the post…

Glass is the material most affected by the amount of breakage in each type of collection system. In single-stream programs, it is virtually impossible to prevent glass from breaking as it goes to the curb, is dumped in the truck, gets compacted, gets dumped on the tipping floor of the MRF, is repeatedly driven over by forklifts, and is dumped on conveyor belts to be processed by the MRF.

As such, if Decatur residents are really concerned about the environment, shouldn’t we look into going back in time a bit and perhaps separating out our glass (at a minimum) with the end goal of making sure more of the items thrown into recycling are actually recycled?  Of course the benefit of single-stream is that its ease of use encourages more people to participate.  But here in Decatur, we already have other mechanisms in place – read: pay-as-you-throw – to encourage continued recycling, so why not be as efficient as possible?

Photo courtesy of Gwyneth