Little Rock, North Little Rock and Sherwood in Arkansas will no longer accept glass in curbside recycling carts starting April 1 through March 31, 2021, and the cities will roll out an education plan to encourage people to recycle only the right materials. Little Rock and the Regional Recycling and Waste Reduction District have discussed the possibility of expanded glass recycling drop-offs and perhaps eventual glass curbside recycling through a separate pickup, district Executive Director Craig Douglass said.
The adjustment isn’t unfamiliar to many Arkansas cities that don’t accept glass in their curbside pickup because of the hazards it poses. The cities that do accept glass require it to be separated from most of the rest of the recycling materials. If not separated at the curb, glass can cause numerous problems with the recycling process, according to recycling officials in Arkansas.
Glass can shatter and contaminate other recyclable materials, posing a safety risk to employees who hand-sort the materials. Workers at Recycle America in Little Rock sort the recycling as it travels down a conveyor belt and into machinery that turns the materials into bales. Another problem is glass can’t be broken down in Recycle America’s machinery.
It’s not much of a moneymaker, either. Recycle America pays several hundred dollars — Manager Rusty Miller estimated from $600 to $700 or more — per load for a truck to haul the glass that is separated by workers to Ripple Glass in Kansas City, Mo. Recycle America sends about one truck each month, and Miller said the expense and labor of handling glass is too much. “Glass is a money loser for us,” Miller said. “Way back in the day, about 15 years ago, it wasn’t a money loser. We were able to break even.”
That’s when recycling was less user-friendly and Recycle America workers sorted glass by color to a different company, Miller said. Recyclers across the country face financial challenges because of China’s crackdown on the amount of contamination allowed in bales that are exported to the country. China has long been the leading recyclables buyer in the world, but its recent anti-pollution program cut the allowable contamination rate to 0.5 percent, and many recyclers consider that a near-impossible requirement to meet.
While some recycling has been shipped recently to other Asian countries that critics say are less prepared to handle the materials, much of the material is left to the United States, where a glut of supply and lack of demand has driven the value of the bales downward.
Currently, four of Arkansas’ 10 cities of 40,000 or more residents offer curbside glass recycling: Little Rock, North Little Rock, Conway and Fayetteville. Residents of the other six cities — Fort Smith, Jonesboro, Springdale, Rogers, Bentonville and Pine Bluff — can deposit glass in recycling drop-off centers, according to the cities’ websites. After April 1, Little Rock and North Little Rock residents will still be able to take glass to Recycle America’s facility in Little Rock’s industrial park.