Local Politics: The End of Recycling?

As part of the ongoing cycle of "things cost more but you end up with less", we have just encountered another brick in the wall.

Yes, I know, I'm mixing my metaphors here...

Our small city is generally pretty good as far as "being green" goes, and subsequently having good recycling facilities. We have several unattended recycling stations where you can just drop off your stuff 24/7, and then we have the main recycling center which is open during the same hours that the city waste facility is open, and you can pretty much recycle anything provided you have it sorted from home and/or put it into the correct bins at the center.

With the arrival of our last utility bill, there was a nice big notice about "changes to the recycling program" included.

The short version of the announcement basically amounted to the fact that effective as of the end of April, recycling will no longer be free... it will now cost $20.00 to drop off your recycling on top of which they will also accept a smaller range of items for recycling.

If you're already getting curbside recycling with your garbage pickup, there's going to be an additional charge/price increase there as well, and fewer things will qualify to be picked up.

This announcement comes on top of price increases over the past couple of years, where taking yard waste to be composted went from a $5 to a $20 base fee, and taking solid waste garbage to the garbage facility went from $10 to a $25 base fee.

This latest announcement pretty much sounds to me like a lose-lose proposition. Most ordinary people aren't going to be willing to pay $20 every time they drop off their recycling, which means they're ultimately going to recycle less and most likely will end up putting recyclable items into their garbage, which is now the cheapest way to get rid of them.

While I can appreciate the arguments that in many cases recycling is simply not economically viable — at least not in semi rural locations like ours — it seems like we're taking steps backwards rather than steps forwards.

Although nobody in city government really wants to admit to it, the previous price increases are "not really working out."

The city is already feeling the effects of the increased yard waste fee, which resulted in a lot more people simply composting their waste on site if they can, or they save it up for occasional back yard (bonfire) burns during the part of the year when there are no burn bans.

For the city, that means that they are collecting far less yard waste that can be turned into compost... as a result of which compost sales — which were providing an additional stream of revenue for the waste facility — have declined substantially.

Meanwhile, property taxes are on the rise because an assortment of City run programs either need more money to be subsidized, or those programs are generating less revenue than they used to. And we end up wondering why that is?

As always, all I can do is sit back and watch and see what unfolds here!

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