Global recycling problems hit home in Perryville; cities feeling impact of financial squeeze

Rising costs and declining prices have resulted in an end to the curbside recycling program in Perryville, Missouri. The Perry County Solid Waste Committee has decided to discontinue the service after this week rather than add to mounting program deficits.

The committee’s decision was made at its meeting Thursday, according to a news release from the Perry County public information office.

Meanwhile, other communities in the area are either considering changes to their recycling programs or have stopped recycling altogether.

Perry County Presiding Commissioner Mike Sauer, who serves on the solid waste committee, said the choice was to either lose thousands of dollars every month or end the program.

“Our goal (at the county recycling center) has never been to make a lot of money, but we do need to operate without a substantial loss or we are not being good stewards of the taxpayer’s dollar,” Sauer said. “Continuing to operate the curbside service at a loss was bad business practice. A couple of years ago, we started charging a $1 monthly fee to city residents participating in the curbside collection, but with the decreased value of the materials, this only covers a fraction of the actual cost to provide the service. The true number needed would be closer to $5 or $6 a month just to break even.”

Sebastian Todd Thomas, right, helps Danny Rees unload his truck of gutted house material Monday at the Cape Girardeau Public Works Transfer Station in Cape Girardeau.KASSI JACKSON

According to Perryville waste management supervisor Sheila Schnurbusch, approximately 1,000 households in Perryville, representing about a third of the homes there, participated in the program and had their recycling picked up once a week. The recycled materials — mostly glass, paper, cardboard and certain types of plastic — were then sold to companies that, in turn, shipped much of it overseas for disposal. In recent years, however, the market for recycled goods has been shrinking.

“The resale prices we are getting for recycled materials cover just a fraction of the labor and equipment costs associated with picking up the materials curbside,” she said, and estimated the curbside service has been operating at an annualized loss of more than $45,000 a year. “Unfortunately, operating in the red is no longer sustainable. It costs us more to process it than we get paid for it. The numbers just haven’t been there for the last four or five years, but we tried to keep it going as long as we could.”

Perryville residents who took advantage of the curbside pickup will see their city utility bills decrease by $1 beginning next month, and they’ll have a choice of either putting their recyclables in with their regular trash or taking their recyclable materials to the Perry County Recycling Center at 5232 North Highway 51, a few miles north of the city limits.

“We’re still encouraging people to use the recycling totes we provided to put their recycled stuff in them, but now they’ll just have to bring it to us,” Schnurbusch said.

She added discontinuation of the curbside service will not result in the elimination of any jobs, only reassignment of job duties for recycling center employees who were involved in the service.

Sebastian Todd Thomas shovels gutted house materials to be discarded out of a truck bed Monday at the Cape Girardeau Public Works Transfer Station in Cape Girardeau.KASSI JACKSON

“We will still have plenty of trash to go around,” she said.

According to Schnurbusch, the dip in the global market for recyclable materials began in 2017, and prices have continued to fall in the months since.

“In 2015, cardboard brought around $100 a ton,” she said, “but right now, we are getting $60 a ton. Two months ago, natural plastics brought in $700 a ton. That price has dropped to $300 a ton. Recyclable paper products like newsprint, magazines and office paper have also taken big hits.”

Not only have resale prices fallen for recyclable materials, changes in manufacturing processes have made it more difficult to accumulate sufficient tonnage to sell. For instance, plastic bottles today are thinner and lighter than they were a few years ago.

“In 2005, when we started curbside pickup in Perryville, it took around 20,000 water bottles to make a ton,” she said. “In 2015, it took 48,000 and now it takes 97,000 plastic water bottles to make a ton, so not only has the necessary volume for a ton of plastic water bottles gone up, but the price that we can sell that ton of plastic has gone down.”

Experts in the field of recycling say there are several factors that have contributed to a global decline in the recycled materials market. China, which has been the world’s leading buyer of recyclable materials, has begun turning away shipments of lower-grade papers, plastics and metals as it adopts stricter anti-pollution policies. Another factor is the rising cost to ship materials overseas as well as the manufacture of thinner packaging that is no longer recyclable grade.

Cape Girardeau

In Cape Girardeau, Public Works director Stan Polivick said there are no plans to change the city’s curbside recycling pickup program, although the city recently stopped accepting certain types of plastics such as plastic bags and newspaper sleeves.

“Plastic bags are the biggest single issue in the ‘single stream’ recycling world right now,” he said, adding “single stream” means Cape Girardeau’s collector of recyclable materials, Republic Services, does not require materials to be presorted.

Polivick said the recycling program in Cape Girardeau costs approximately $130,000 a year to operate while revenue generated from the sale of recyclable materials amounts to only around $20,000 a year, meaning the net cost to the city is an estimated $110,000 annually.

“Recycling has never paid for itself,” he said. “Any (recycling) program on the planet has to be subsidized.”

Although Polivick said there have been “some lengthy and ongoing conversations” about the future of Cape Girardeau’s curbside recycling program, there are no plans to change it.

“Rather than stopping our program, we’re looking at increasing public education and reminding people not to put things that don’t belong in recycling in recycling.”

In addition to curbside pickup, Cape Girardeau residents also have the option of taking recyclable materials to the city’s drive-through recycling center along Southern Expressway.

Jackson

Jackson residents who wish to recycle must take their recyclable materials to the Jackson Recycling Center, 508 Eastview Court, which is open from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. daily except Sundays when it is closed.

Jackson administrative services director Rodney Bollinger said city officials had considered providing curbside recycling pickup if a use tax proposal had passed earlier this month. However, because the tax proposal was defeated, Bollinger said “we have decided not to make any changes in our recycling program at this time.”

The shrinking market for recycled materials is something Jackson officials are watching carefully and will be something the Jackson Board of Aldermen will likely discuss in the near future, Bollinger said.

Scott City

Scott City eliminated its entire recycling program in June, citing rising costs and shrinking resale markets. With no local recycling program, many Scott City residents simply combine materials that could be recycled with their non-recyclable trash.

“The market has basically fallen off from where you could sell recyclables,” said Scott City administrator Mark O’Dell. “It’s a global problem.”

O’Dell said offering a recycling program is simply a luxury small towns such as Scott City can’t afford.

“We’d sure like to, and if we can find a cost-effective alternative it, might be possible,” he said. “If you can solve this problem, let me know.”

jwolz@semissourian.com

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