CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cleveland likely will not have a new recycling program until at least next spring, Mayor Frank Jackson’s administration has told City Council.

A consultant hired by the city to review Cleveland’s garbage collection plans to report by the end of the year, Darnell Brown, Jackson’s operations chief, said Monday.

That consultant, GT Environmental, will make recommendations for renewing recycling as well as changing other operations to improve efficiency while reducing costs.

After that, efforts will be needed to make the public aware of any new recycling programs before launching them.

“If we get a report and into recommendations by the end of January, then I would expect somewhere in mid 2021 that we’d start seeing some things are implemented,” Brown told City Council’s Finance Committee.

Cleveland has not had a recycling program since last April, when its contract with a recycler expired. Cleveland twice sought bids on a new contract. The first time, no bids were received. The second time, the city received one bid.

That bid, though, would have increased the cost by $6 million a year – equal to about one-fifth of the entire budget for Cleveland’s trash pickup operation.

The problem with recycling is that the market for the recyclable materials has nearly disappeared.

At one point, Cleveland was being paid about $20 a ton for recyclable goods. By the end of 2018, the city was getting about $1.50 per ton. That same year, China put restrictions in place that effectively closed its market, which had been accepting about 40% of U.S. recyclable goods. The market for plastics is virtually nearly non-existent.

And finding a vendor may be difficult because Clevelanders are notorious for not separating recyclable materials properly. About 55% of all recyclables collected were contaminated with other waste, forcing the vendor to send them to landfills.

A high level of contamination makes it more difficult for a recycler to sell materials and make money on the contract with the city.

“A big part of our challenge here is that our residents have been a big part of the problem,” Councilman Mike Polensek said. “We all know that there’s a big problem with our own residents who do not want to comply, who contaminated the waste stream.”

Simply restarting recycling without getting better buy-in from residents would likely face similar problems. Part of GT’s recommendations will be finding ways to promote better compliance, whether through education or through enactment of stronger rules and penalties, Brown said.

The collapse of the recycling program has been a sore spot for several council members who have urged that the administration try some simple steps, such as setting up drop-off points for products such as paper and cardboard.