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The Lake Jackson Mulch and Recycling Service Center recyclable collection bin is nearly full Friday.
Lake Jackson Sanitation Foreman Kirk Calhoun explains that Lake Jackson residents can drop off their recyclables Tuesday through Saturday at the Mulch and Recycling Service Center at 103 Canna Lane.
CMC Recycling in Clute offers a way to make money while recycling scrap metal like the sorted aluminum.
The Lake Jackson Mulch and Recycling Service Center recyclable collection bin is nearly full Friday.
Lake Jackson Sanitation Foreman Kirk Calhoun explains that Lake Jackson residents can drop off their recyclables Tuesday through Saturday at the Mulch and Recycling Service Center at 103 Canna Lane.
CMC Recycling in Clute offers a way to make money while recycling scrap metal like the sorted aluminum.
PLASTIC TYPES The number in a triangle at the bottom of the plastic container designates its type. 1 PET: Soda bottles, oven-ready meal trays, water bottles, etc. … 2 HDPE: Milk bottles, detergent bottles, spray bottles, etc. … 3 PVC: Loose-leaf binders and plastic pipes, etc. … 4 LDPE: Dry-cleaning bags, produce bags, squeezable bottles, etc. … 5 PP: Medicine bottles, drinking straws and food containers, including ketchup bottles, sour cream/butter/hummus tubs. 6 PS: Compact disc jackets and plastic tableware, etc 7 other: Reusable water bottles, certain kinds of food containers and Tupperware
R ecycling is nothing new, with many communities in Brazoria County including the service as part of their trash hauling contracts. Despite the long history of encouraging people to set aside items that can be given a second life, the share of people who participate is relatively small, and those who do use the green bins have a tendency to fill it with items that don’t belong.
Brent Bell, vice president of recycling at Waste Management, has worked with the company for 25 years and is well aware of the recycling market.
When commodity markets are low, recycling customers might have to pay for the service; when prices are high for materials, there could be a rebate or benefit to their program, he said.
Across North America, Waste Management has invested more than $800 million into recycling infrastructure in an attempt to improve the quality of materials and storage capacity and have been open since 1968.
With the current recycling rate of 30 percent in the United States, more companies are increasing their sustainability goals to use more recycled material in the products they produce every day.
There is a 25 percent expected growth in tons diverted to recycling by 2026 through accelerated investments in automation and expanding footprints, according to Waste Management’s website.
But good intentions are not translating to recyclable items being kept out of landfills. A report release this week found 95 percent of recyclable plastics produced in the United States ended up in the nation’s landfills. That accounts for roughly 309 pounds of plastic per person, according to the research by Greenpeace USA.
The report, Circular Claims Fall Flat Again, updates the 2020 survey of 370 recycling plants which found most plastics were not widely accepted, and even the bottles and jugs were not completely recycled or recyclable. Not much has changed, in fact the official recycling rate in the US has fallen from a high of 9.5% in 2014 and 8.7 percent in 2018. At that time, the U.S., like many countries, exported millions of tons of plastic waste to China and counted it as recycled even though much of it was burned or dumped.
China since stopped accepting the labeled recyclables because most of it was garbage — too dirty to recycle, The Guardian reported. With that waste stream eliminated, it instead went to domestic landfills while the use of plastics has gone up.
People not understanding which materials are suitable for recycling and how to prepare them before dropping them into green bins is part of the problem.
“A few bad apples ruin it for everybody else,“ Damian Hinojo, a representative for Waste Connections, said during a Sweeny City Council meeting last month.
He gave an example of someone throwing away an old gallon of milk into their recycling bin — it spreads and contaminates the recyclables like cardboard. This causes the material to be rejected by the recycling center. The current contamination rate is 80 percent, Hinojo said.
“After the first few times that we dump it on the ground and they expect it and it’s contaminated, after that they just make us open up the back-end,” Hinojo said. “If there’s trash juice, they close it back up.”
Even when items are disposed of properly, not all of them are actually recyclable, Bell said. Some areas of the country are expanding what is considered recyclable, he said, which will keep more material out of the waste stream.
“There are several states passing minimum content legislation requiring recycled materials to be included in these products,” Bell said. “We see this trend continuing which will require unlocking more recycling material that is currently destined for the landfill.”
The impact being seen from inflation has really been in the form of less volume from customers, which means less materials that our facilities are able to recycle, he said.
Instead, it has been weather that has had a larger impact, Bell said, with residential customers and cleaning out liquids from bottles and food from containers is recommended. Waste Management residential programs typically have 64 to 96 gallon carts with lids to protect materials.
Bell recommends sticking to the basics of bottles, cans, paper and cardboard. Those items can turn materials back into new products.
The one stress is to empty each of those, before disposing.
One of the don’ts in recycling is leaving boxes and cartons with liquid and solids in it, a common theme being pizza boxes.
“Pizza boxes, because they’re compromised with food products, are not supposed to go into the recycling bin,” Sweeny City Manager Lindsey Koskiniemi said.
She believes there is no intention with putting them in the recycling with products in them; she considers it more of the trash can having too much and throwing it into recycling instead.
“I think it largely comes from people just not really knowing what is eligible for recycling and what is not,” she said.
Waste Management’s material recovery facilities operations are subject to the risk of fires, often due to lithium-ion batteries incorrectly being placed in recycling bins that can ignite when the casing is compromised.
As the use of such batteries in consumer goods has increased, so has this risk. Waste Management uses a fire suppression technology that automatically detects fire or smoke in the recycling stream, even when no workers are present.
Batteries and propane tanks are suggested not to be put in recycling bins due to inflammatory precautions.
If needed, the system deploys a foam cannon to put out flames, reducing potential risks to our people and significant damage to our facilities. We expect to have this technology installed in all MRFs by the end of 2022.
In Brazoria County, recycling continues to be a mixed bag between cities that have their own company or going to landfills to drop it off.
Sweeny hired Koskiniemi in July and she is getting familiar with the city’s methods for trash pickup.
“It’s trash pickup weekly, heavy trash pickup weekly, recycling once every other week,” she said.
Everyone is issued a roll-around bin the same size as the trash can bins given.
The city has been with Waste Connections, and before Koskiniemi took position, the cost went up 87 cents per account on trash services. During a recent city council meeting, discussions of eliminating recycling services surfaced, but no action was taken.
“We were told that it was because of the higher fuel costs and just costs associated with providing trash service or refuse service,” she said. “They just stayed and the council decided to stay with the same level of service, make no changes and accept that the 87-cent increase would happen,” she said.
After that, there were multiple public meetings in August and September talking about increasing recycling prices and to get bids from companies for it. They received six different pricing options to keep the level of service the same.
The waste rate became so high with the city, it considered ending services. They discovered through research that a lot of items not categorized as recyclable were being thrown into green bins.
They renewed the contract with Waste Connections through 2025.
Freeport resident Melanie Oldham has been an advocate for recycling and has worked in the public health environment for more than 20 years, she said.
The city does not have a contract with a waste company that includes recycling and normally takes its recycling to Seabreeze Landfill. The recycling center there is being shut down, forcing cities to seek other avenues for processing recyclables.
Lake Jackson has discussed multiple options to retain its program while Freeport debated earlier this year whether to have one considering the low level of participation.
She has seen in other cities where grocery bags and fabrics are changed to be more recyclable friendly, with grocery stores in Austin going from the prototypical plastic bags to cloth bags. Major retail chains such as Kroger have announced a move to eliminate single-use plastic bags.
Oldham recognized that in Angleton, they distribute green recycling bins and consider it a way of life for those that have a green bin.
“Once people learned what it was about, they realized it has value, so a lot of that stuff will be recycled,” she said.
Freeport currently does not have recycling pickups, with regular trash pick-ups on Monday and Thursday of each week and heavy brush pickup the first Wednesday and heavier brush on the second Wednesday.
Since moving into the city, Freeport has changed garbage collection companies twice, but she has put in a concerted effort to speak on bringing recycling back, at an affordable price.
Previous companies have attempted to add recycling services with plastics and papers, but it became an issue due to the company not coming to empty the recycling bins.
“I think it would be a good thing for citizens to have here,” she said.
Andrew Tineo is a reporter for The Facts, contact him at 979-237-0151 or andrew.tineo@thefacts.com.
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Office Paper, Newspaper, Brown Paper Bags, Magazines, Junk mail and Phone books.
Plastic Bottles and Containers (#1 - #7)
1 PET: Soda bottles, Oven-Ready meal trays and Water bottles, etc...
2 HDPE: Milk bottles, Detergent bottles and Spray Bottles, etc...
3 PVC: Loose-leaf binders and plastic pipes, etc...
4 LDPE: Dry cleaning bags, Produce bags and Squeezable bottles, etc.
5 PP: Medicine bottles, Drinking straws and Food containers: ketchup bottles, sour cream/butter/hummus tubs.
6 PS: Compact disc jackets and plastic tableware, etc
7 other: Reusable water bottles, certain kinds of food containers and Tupperware
Aluminum Foil, Pie tins, Tin Cans, Steel cans
Flattened Cardboard Paper Board (Cereal Boxes and Snack Boxes), Paper Cardboard (Dairy and
Juice Containers), Toilet Paper and Paper Towel Rolls
All colors of Glass accepted: Clear, Blue, Green and Brow
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