PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Curbside recycling is coming back to Pensacola, but you'll pay extra if you want it.
City leaders believe charging for the service will solve a longstanding problem.
At his weekly news conference, Mayor DC Reeves announced that Adams Sanitation, based in Okaloosa County, was selected as the city's new recycling provider.
"I'm encouraged by the proposal, I'm very excited to get 'recycling 2.0'," Reeves said. "That means recycling that means something, when it goes in that can, it's having a positive impact on our environment. That's what we want."
Pensacola ended curbside recycling for all households in the fall of 2023.
City leaders said half the items being tossed into recycling bins were just trash, making the whole load impossible to recycle.
This time around, recycling will be a subscription service. People who opt-in will pay an extra fee.
Nathan Boyles is the owner of Adams Sanitation. He says it's a model that works.
"The people that will be recycling are the people that choose to recycle," Boyles said. "And what that will do is it significantly improves the quality of the recycling flows and reduces contamination rates."
Boyles says his company is running a successful subscription program in Santa Rosa County right now, with three or four thousand customers choosing to pay for recycling.
He says as a hauling service, Adams Sanitation can negotiate with multiple recyclers to find the best deal. He also says more options are on tap.
"Even here in Northwest Florida, there's a large corporation -- Waste Management -- that is building out a new recycling facility in south Okaloosa County, which will provide another end location for those materials to potentially go to," Boyles said.
Mayor Reeves says the scope of what can be recycled will be much narrower this time, with just four or five types of items included.
"The combination of making it simpler to understand, as well as the folks that want to recycle are the ones opting in to do so at a fee, means those people are motivated to get it right," he said.
The mayor says there is not a specific timeline to hammer out the details of the program, but he believes customers will have an idea of the start date sometime this summer.
Nathan Boyles says he can't speak for Waste Management, but he believes their new recycling facility in the Fort Walton Beach Commerce and Technology Park will be operating around the third quarter of this year.
Courtesy : Weartv.com
