The city of Salina is close to signing a lease on a building for a drive-through recycling center. Jim Teutsch, operations manager for the city, wanted to tell the solid waste management committee all about it at a meeting Thursday evening, but he said he couldn’t.

He supplied what general information he could. Patrons will drive into the building, an attendant will take the recyclables from the vehicle and put them directly into a packer truck. Then the patrons will drive out.

The recyclables will never touch the ground, Teutsch said, keeping them cleaner and uncontaminated.

At this point, the recycling center will be available only to Salina residents, Teutsch said.

“As soon as we get a lease signed, we’ll talk with the county” about including county residents, said Jim Kowach, director of public works for the city.

Teutsch spoke about the drive-through center as part of a preview of a report he will present Feb. 12 to the Salina City Commission. Commissioners will be looking at options proposed by a survey on automation, recycling and yard waste.

Automation favored

The committee offered feedback and voted on the options contained in the survey.

The most popular option was fully automating trash collection to improve efficiency and employee safety with the drive-through recycling center. This option would eliminate the city’s subscription recycling program and yard waste would be collected with the trash to go into the landfill.

This was the cheapest option at $14.60 a month. The public works department is proposing adding a $1 charge to the water bills of residential and small-business customers to pay for the recycling center.

The charge for the current semi-automated city collection system is $17.45 a month.

No simple answers

The second most popular option was adding universal recycling to the first option, which would cost $18.40.

But to demonstrate there are no simple answers in solid waste management, the committee also liked the option of collecting yard waste separately.

To read the full story, visit http://www.salina.com/news/20180125/city-close-to-lease-on-recycling-center.

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