Emporia city leaders have expressed some concerns about the future of the city’s curbside recycling program, also known as Curbit.
The concern isn’t about the program’s use. On KVOE’s Talk of Emporia on Monday, Solid Waste Supervisor Keith Senn said there are currently around 7,600 eligible residences — with about 6,900 either with the green-topped recycling Polycarts or actively involved in the program. The issue is the recycling market as a whole after China abruptly withdrew two years ago.
The city is in the early stages of negotiating a contract with Hamm Companies. Documents from the Aug. 26 City Commission study meeting indicate an increased expense of nearly $1 per customer per month to continue the program. The proposed contract also includes higher upfront expenses for hauling and sorting but would pay back higher rebates if recycling markets return to pre-2018 levels. Last year, the final cost to the city was almost $80,000, including no rebate revenue from the sale of recyclables. In fact, the city hasn’t received a rebate since China left the recycling market. The last rebate was around $12,000 for the first half of 2017.
Senn says the current contract is in place through New Year’s Eve. Senn is hoping the program can remain in place, and he says other cities that have shut down their programs reconsider that decision within a year, but they then have to redistribute or repurchase the equipment they need. He also says there is a chance the local program could expand, but the recycling market would have to return to pre-2018 levels for that to happen.
There is some good news in that domestic demand for cardboard has increased from $40 a ton in January to $95 a ton in July — a big step because cardboard accounts for 90 percent of the revenue from the sale of materials at Emporia’s Recycling Center.
Currently, Emporia’s recycling program is available to single-family homes and multi-family apartment complexes with four units or less. Glass, most paper, corrugated cardboard and plastics with numbers 1-7 are now accepted. Recyclables are sent to the Hamm material recovery facility in Lawrence for sorting and processing.
Senn says the program has generated over 1,000 tons a year and has collected better than 11 million pounds of materials since it started in June 2015.
