Niles officials awarded a contract for textile recycling, such as used clothing and rags, to a company last month which will begin pick up services in late June.
Village trustees signed a contract with Great Lakes Recycling, which runs Simple Recycling, at their April 24 board meeting. The contract is expected to earn the village $900 in direct revenue and save Niles taxpayers nearly $28,000 by diverting nearly 600 tons of trash from landfills each year.
Beginning Monday, June 25, Simple Recycling trucks will follow trucks from the village’s regular waste hauler Groot, along trash and recycling pickup routes on a weekly basis to collect textiles that residents want to recycle.
Before that date, brightly colored, durable bags will be sent to each Niles home for residents to place the recyclables into. Bags would then be left on the street next to Groot bins and replaced with new bags. Rather than being buried in a landfill or incinerated, materials collected would be recycled as material for insulation or car seat filler.
The program is endorsed by the Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County. Village officials said the program received high marks from other area municipalities that use the service.
Niles would realize cost savings, since the village’s contract with Groot is based in part on volume. The more volume diverted by recycling, the less the village pays for service.
Simple Recycling’s parent company says textiles make up 6 percent of municipal solid waste in the United States and 84 percent of textiles are discarded not recycled. In Illinois, that represents more than 540,000 tons annually, or 1.08 billion pounds. In Niles, residents toss about 1.1 million pounds of textiles away each year.
To read the full story, visit https://www.journal-topics.com/articles/niles-to-roll-out-free-textile-recycling-program/.