City officials want to cut the cost of recycling by reducing the number of collection sites around Lincoln and believe having fewer sites will also save homeowners money.
As the market for recyclables has disappeared, the cost to run the city's recycling program has climbed. The program's cost is funded by garbage haulers who pay an occupation tax for every ton of trash they dump at the landfill.
The contractor that had been servicing the city's recycling collection sites went out of business last year, and recycling officials saw the estimated and actual costs of continuing the current recycling program rise, Donna Garden of Lincoln Transportation and Utilities said.
The city would need to raise the occupation tax at the landfill by $12 per ton to cover the estimated $3.1 million cost of servicing the current 19 collection sites in city limits, Garden told the Mayor's Environmental Task Force last week.
Most haulers pass along those fees to their customers, and the city believes that hike would add $4 more to each trash bill.
Instead, the city proposes cutting the number of sites to four or five, which officials think would cost about $1 million to operate, she said.
The mayor's proposed city budget recommends a $5 per ton increase in the occupation tax, which also funds other programs, and that increase is expected to add about $1.66 to a trash bill, Garden said.
The city expects to pay about $430,000 to have the recycled materials collected at the new sites processed, she said.
In the past, processed recyclables used to generate about a $300,000 profit annually for the city, but the crash of the international market for recycled materials wiped out the income of recycling programs in Lincoln and elsewhere.
Despite the popularity of the city's recycling sites, curbside collection provides the most efficient service, and it serves as the best way to increase recycling overall, Garden said.
But some attendees of a environmental task force's virtual meeting voiced concern that the reduced number of sites would make it harder for people in apartments and in the denser parts of the city to comply with the city's cardboard ban.
Garden said she hopes the new and enlarged sites will be targeted for locations that can still attract people who don't recycle from their home.
Melissa Mercier of Uribe Refuse Services, which services the collection sites, said the city needs to increase its education about what to recycle at the sites to minimize the possibility that items not clean enough for processing will contaminate a load.
Running fewer and larger sites will also make it easier for the city to crack down on illegal dumping, because the city can better allocate people volunteering for its Bin Buddies program, which monitors sites and helps people recycle correctly, Garden said.
In January, the City Council created a new ban on illegal dumping at recycling collection sites in response to issues at sites where people dumped trash. City police recently issued the first ticket for violating the new ordinance.
On May 26, a resident recycling at the Trabert Hall site at 11th and South streets saw someone pull up and dump off a television, metal bed frame, metal tubing and a truck tire rim, Lincoln Police officer Erin Spilker said.
The person took pictures of the dumper's vehicle and items they abandoned there and reported it to the city's waste diversion coordinator, who contacted police.
The misdemeanor ticket was issued June 17 and carries up to a $500 fine or six months in jail.
