Olympia, which runs its own garbage and recycling hauling service, wants to stop accepting glass in curbside recycling bins. Instead, residents would need to drop off glass at the city’s collection site off Eastside Street Southeast or at a yet-to-be-determined site on the west side.
The move is linked to China’s recent crackdown on imported recyclables, which decreased the value of materials and made recycling more expensive. In 2017, Olympia spent about $610,000 on residential recycling but earned $457,000 from the resale of materials. This year, it expects to spend about $719,000 but earn only $77,600.
Glass, which makes up about 22 percent of what the city collects, is expensive to transport since it is heavy, and broken bits get mixed up with other materials, making them harder to recycle and less valuable.
“We’re in an environment where we’re promoting people using vehicles less, and so one message would be if you’re going to the store, time your glass drop off with going to the store,” Franks said during a presentation Tuesday to the City Council. “But not everybody has a car, and so we’ve been trying to think through that.”
Other options presented included collecting glass in separate curbside containers, which would cost more than what the city spends now, or stopping recycling glass altogether.