RECYCLING TRASH

The city of Cape Girardeau could find itself in a dilemma when it resumes handling residential trash for recycling this summer. For the past year, the city has contract with Browning-Ferris Industries to pick up recyclable materials. Like BFI, the city may be hard-pressed to find a market for the recyclable trash it collects to help recover costs of resuming operation of the city recycling center. If the market for recyclables continues to slump, trash-collection costs undoubtedly will go up.

The situation points toward a basic problem with large-scale recycling efforts. While the idea is commendable, rarely is it financially feasible, even when city trash-service customers are paying a basic rate of $12.13 monthly to have their recyclable and non-recyclable trash collected by the city.

BFI recently announced it could no longer handle recyclable trash at $45 a ton. Because the market for recyclables has softened, BFI said it would have to have $160 a ton to continue to process recyclables after June 1. So the city to resume its recycling operations as it did before BFI came on the scene.

The city believes it can continue to pick up residents' trash at the current rate. To avoid a price increase, it intends to pick up only two trash containers weekly instead of three, as it has been doing. Residents would be able to put out additional trash bags at a cost of $1 each. For years, the city operated its own landfill, but it filled up. The city now trucks trash to a regional, privately operated landfill.

Resuming the recycling operations is being forced upon the city because there is very little demand for recyclable goods. If there is no market for private business, neither will there be for the city.

Recycling helps to some extent preserve certain natural resources, but more importantly it slows the amount of trash going into landfills, permitting them to operate longer. But recycling also is putting a burden on the city by forcing it to again process the recyclable trash discarded by its citizens.

Until a market develops that makes recycling profitable, the city and its citizens can expect to continue to pay for a good-intentioned effort that offers little or no financial return.