Changes are coming to the Dawson County recycling program.
As the county grapples with rising costs associated with recycling and the small to non-existent market for plastic recycling, local officials are planning to shift to a program that accepts clean cardboard, paper, and metal only, from the Dawson County Transfer Station on Burt Creek Road.
At a meeting of the Dawson County Commissioners on Sept. 17, commissioners unanimously approved the development of a new recycling program that can be reviewed in six months, to determine its effectiveness.
While presenting to commissioners at the meeting, Dawson County Public Works Director David McKee explained that this update was kicked off by the growing problem of how the county is dealing with plastic recycling and what is happening to plastics when they are deposited at the transfer station.
McKee said that there is a common misconception circling that plastic deposited in the county is being thrown away, but that isn’t correct. Instead, plastics are currently being taken, bundled, and stored by a third-party company. At one point they might have been shipped overseas to truly be recycled, he said, but that doesn’t really happen anymore because there isn’t a market for plastic recycling.