Glass just too pricey to recycle

Even when North Idaho residents could sort out their glass for recycling at the Kootenai County Solid Waste site, most of the sand-made materials ended up where they do now – in the earth. As of the beginning of this year, however, the county stopped accepting glass recyclables, which it had been using to close up a two-acre pit near the Solid Waste Department’s Ramsey transfer station.

All glass, classified as domestic waste along with most household trash, is buried at the Fighting Creek Landfill. Though it’s been a contentious issue from the beginning, Solid Waste Director Roger Saterfiel said it’s a decision the county had no choice but to make.

“Glass is something that the public absolutely loves to recycle. It’s just there’s no market for it,” Saterfiel said. “When we quit taking glass, we had quite the uproar here. … We looked at the market, and we found that we couldn’t afford” to recycle glass.

For years, the county had been allowed to use crushed glass as filler in the pit, along with inert materials, including brick, dirt, rocks and concrete. That is until an annual Department of Environmental Quality inspection put a stop to the practice because glass is listed as solid, domestic waste and can’t be used in inert sites. The labels on the bottles were cited as a primary environmental concern in abandoning glass recycling in the pit.

“It’s really sad that there’s no market for it, there’s just nothing that can be done with it,” said Cynthia Taggart, the Panhandle Health District’s spokeswoman. As far as the new recycling ruling, she added, “It’s really just sticking to the letter of the law. The health department said, ‘Wait a minute, we’re not abiding by this, but we need to.’ “

That’s a decision being mirrored around the country. While some regions are able to ship glass bottles and jars to cities where recycling programs are in place, many more cities and counties can’t afford the heavy material’s high transportation costs, lack nearby recycling centers and lack the needed subsidies to help offset the expense of recycling glass.

It’s estimated that three-quarters, if not more, of recycled glass ended up as aggregate fill material in pits such as the one by the transfer station rather than being turned into new glass materials, according to Kootenai County Solid Waste officials. “That’s what we’ve been told. There’s very little use for it,” Saterfiel said.

In other words, new glass is cheaper than old glass.

While the yearly amount of glass waste dropped off at the Kootenai County transfer station is a drop in the overall bucket of the county’s solid waste, with an estimated 280 tons of glass out of the more than 137,687 tons of solid waste in 2007, it would have cost almost $20,000 to send that same glass to an out-of-state recycling center, said Sam Ross, the recycling coordinator for Solid Waste.

“In garbage, it’s a different world than you’d expect,” he said, about the unprofitable nature of salvaging old glass. “For some reason, everyone wants to recycle glass. Most of your major recycling programs today, glass is just a byproduct.”

Kootenai County will continue to recycle metal, plastic, paper and wood, with almost 16,000 tons of lumber dropped off last year. Some of the wood is taken by outside agencies and burned, where it goes back out as fuel to power the electric grid.

While North Idaho residents can take glass containers to Spokane County, there is a charge of $35 per ton, or under 2 cents per pound, said Willie Lampe of Spokane Recycling Products. “It’s a personal decision,” he said, when asked whether he encourages people to bring in their glass recyclables from outside the area.

Spokane’s glass recyclables are trucked to Canada, where they are crushed and made into fiberglass. But the downturn in the housing market has reached across the border, with production on the building material slowing and, as a result, some of Spokane’s glass shipments are forced to sit idle at the transfer station, Lampe said.

“There’s times when they haven’t been able to take it,” he said, adding that “unfortunately there’s just not a huge demand for glass.”

Some areas have found more creative conduits for recycling glass. In Boise, for example, residents can take their glass jars and bottles to recycling drop-off points scattered around the city, where it is then transferred to an old gravel pit, crushed every three years and used under asphalt in road projects.

The roughly five-year-old program, paid for through the city’s garbage service customer rates, is a partnership between the city of Boise, BFI Waste Services and the Ada County Highway District. From October 2007 through last month, the collection program logged more than 1,624,998 pounds of glass at an expense of almost $15,000.

“It isn’t technically recycling, but we are finding an alternative use for it,” said Catherine Chertudi, Boise Public Works environmental programs manager. “We’re the only ones around here with a glass program.”

And how have residents responded?

“They love it, unfortunately they love it to death,” Chertudi said, adding that the program requires a small army of interns to keep the drop-off sites clean and organized. “We continually struggle with contamination and over-loaded bins,” she said.

In Kootenai County, meanwhile, Solid Waste is working on a new electronic waste program, which will be coming to the county soon, Saterfiel said. He added the department’s been getting briefed on a potential deluge in electronic waste drop-offs starting in February 2009, when older television sets officially become outdated as all TV channels switch from analog to digital.

“We’re going to try and get the best bang for our buck,” Saterfiel said, referring to the expected high price to operate an electronic waste program, which will cost about $20 for both computers and monitors to have sent to an undetermined, but established, recycling center. “It’s going to cost us a lot of money, but it’s also a much greater impact on the environment than glass.”

What should North Idaho residents who want to make a difference do in the meantime?

There are always the little things that count, such as keeping a designated grocery bag handy and going with paper bags over the ubiquitous plastic counterparts. “Those are the kinds of things we like to see happen,” Ross said.

As for glass items, Saterfiel said, “All I can tell you is right now, until we can find a source, just throw it in the garbage,” though mentioning that just because they don’t have a glass recycler lined up, doesn’t mean they’ve stopped looking. “We don’t give up, we pester people,” he said.

In the long run, Saterfiel said he thinks state and county laws are in need of an amendment. “Idaho really needs to, at some point here, step up and start mandating recycling,” he said, adding maybe the glass and electronic manufactures should be charged a set recycling fee. “We just can’t continue to bury things in the ground.”