LIME CITY — After months of struggling to maintain the cardboard recycling program Perrysburg Township and the Wood County Solid Waste Management District have announced that as of Sept. 1, the 24/7 residential recycling drop-off site will no longer accept cardboard.
The site is located behind the Perrysburg Township offices at 26609 Lime City Road.
“The 24/7 program started June 2018. It has been expanded in the last year and a half, to accommodate the volume of materials that have been coming in. Unfortunately, at this time we can’t expand it any further,” said Hannah Smith, recycling and outreach coordinator for the Wood County Solid Waste Management District.
The district had applied for a grant with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, but those grants were recently suspended, due to budgetary concerns.
“All the bins at our disposal are being utilized at our 12 different sites,” Smith said. “This was not an overnight decision. We had had multiple talks with those affected by the issue, trying to come up with alternative, cost-effective solutions. Perrysburg Township ultimately made the decision that this would be the solution that would work best for their site, and we supported that decision.”
She does not see the program coming back in the near future.
“We’ve had a significant increase in volume of recycling coming into all of our sites, due to stay-at-home orders and people being home more, getting more deliveries, more cardboard especially, and we’ve also seen rising costs for recycling programs, across the board. So this is not county specific. I think the surrounding counties are seeing the same we are,” Smith said.
The City of Perrysburg has recently eliminated cardboard recycling programs, which Smith said added to the problem in Perrysburg Township.
The Perrysburg Township site has had many months with overflowing containers, primarily due to the high volume of cardboard, uncollapsed boxes and commercial use of the residential program.
There has been a drop in price for the fiber goods recently, but the county does not operate the program on a profit based model, Smith said.
“The county itself is not affected by market fluctuations, as far as receiving any type of profit in accepting certain materials,” she said. “Our contract is not based on material or market prices. It is a fixed contract per year with Republic Services, so it doesn’t affect our budget on either end.”
Although intended to be open 24/7, the Perrysburg Township site is routinely closed four days per week due to the containers being full. The nine containers at the site are dumped twice each week on Wednesday and on Saturday and the site is closed when all containers are full.
Opened as a 24/7 residential recycling facility in summer 2018, the original operating plan called for six containers, to be picked up once a week. Despite the addition of three containers and doubling the number of pickup days, the site is overwhelmed with material.
The Wood County Solid Waste Management District currently pays over $50,000 per year to fund the recycling program at Perrysburg Township, including a $12,500 payment to Perrysburg Township to maintain the site.
After several months of consideration, the Perrysburg Township Trustees voted July 15 to eliminate cardboard recycling.
Officials from both the township and the district hope that the elimination of cardboard will allow the site to remain open as a 24/7 public service for residential recycling of metal cans, plastic bottles, jugs and containers, mixed paper, wax cartons and food and beverage glass.
Individuals who desire to continue recycling cardboard may take their cardboard to the Bowling Green Recycling Center located at 1040 N. College Drive.
Perrysburg Township and the Solid Waste Management District are asking for the cooperation of residents in making this transition.
According to Carri Stanley, assistant county administrator, the center will also work with commercial facilities to recycle cardboard.
New signage will be posted at the Perrysburg Township site to remind residents that cardboard is no longer accepted. Residents should be aware that violations of posted regulations are a criminal trespass, a misdemeanor of the fourth degree under Ohio Revised Code. The facility is under video surveillance and local law enforcement may issue criminal citations for observed violations.