City seeks ways to decrease cost of recycling

When Vestavia Hills Councilwoman Kimberly Cook was talking to a friend about recycling, Cook admitted she didn’t think much of it.

From that conversation, Cook’s interest piqued. She began to ask questions about how much the city paid for recycling, how many tons of recyclable materials the city sent to Birmingham Recycling and Recovery (BRR) and how to possibly lower the cost to the city to recycle more.

Cook, along with council members from neighboring cities, began asking how recycling can be increased while keeping costs down for municipalities in the Birmingham area.

“I had a lot to learn about recycling because I really didn’t understand the process and where it all went,” Cook said.

Cook spoke with Vestavia’s contractor for recycling and trash hauling, Republic Services, which told her about the cost of recycling and how Republic passes the cost on to the city. Each month’s bill depends on the volume of recyclables delivered to BRR, Cook said. And the cost also depends on how well people follow directions about what can be recycled and what cannot.

Anywhere from 15% to 35% of the items sent to BRR from Vestavia Hills are actually unable to be recycled because either those types of items aren’t accepted or they are contaminated with food residue or some other unrecyclable material, Cook said. That “contamination rate” is about average for this area, she said.

BRR in October increased the rate it charges to accept recyclable materials from municipalities from $30 to $65 per ton. The rate for handling contaminated items decreased from $75 to $50 per ton.

BRR increased its price for processing recyclables because of a decrease in the overall amount of uncontaminated materials being received, Cook said. The decreased volume meant lower profits for BRR when the company sold the items, she said.

BRR’s price increase has an effect on cities, though residents are not charged directly for the act of recycling. Thankfully, the city found some efficiencies — ways to decrease costs — in the hauling contract with Republic, according to the city’s communications director, Cinnamon McCulley.

Still, the increased rates could pose a problem in the future, and Cook said it’s important for residents to lower their contamination rates and to increase the volume of recyclables sent to BRR.

The good news for Vestavia is the city has picked up the pace in the last calendar year, according to statistics provided by McCulley. The city sent about 480 tons of acceptable items for recycling to BRR from January 2019 through June 2019, an increase of roughly 25 tons from the same time period in 2018. Meanwhile, the amount of contaminated materials that Vestavia Hills sent to BRR from January 2019 to June 2019 dropped from 280 tons in 2018 to 245 tons in 2019, those statistics show.

McCulley said a lot of the reason for the increase is generational. “Young people have grown up with it,” she said.

Cook said if the city can increase the volume of recyclables sent to BRR, it might be possible in the future to ask for a reasonable reduction in cost. Theoretically, BRR would be making more money off the sale of recyclables, she said.

Concern about the rising cost of recycling is spreading across the Birmingham area. Cook meets regularly with council members from neighboring cities such as Hoover, Homewood and Mountain Brook who are also working to increase recycling and bring costs down in their cities. A new challenge among Vestavia, Homewood, Hoover and Mountain Brook recently began, with the city that lowers its contamination rate the most receiving checks from the other cities, to be donated to its charity of choice.

“I think there is a lot of enthusiasm, and there is a lot of interest,” Cook said.

In order to determine the “true cost” of recycling, Cook has asked the city to separate the recycling aspect of its waste contract from the cost of hauling trash that goes to the landfill. She wants to determine if it’s worth continuing to provide the recycling service to the residents, or if the responsibility should fall on those residents in the city who want to recycle.

However, as long as the city does recycle, Cook said she wants people to do it the right way and keep costs to the city low.

The main rule residents need to know for recycling, Cook said, is that items must be “clean, dry and empty.” That means no greasy pizza boxes, no leftover food, no wire hangers, no scrap metal, no containers with liquid and no Styrofoam.

One of the biggest issues BRR faces is plastic bags, Cook said. Using a plastic bag will get materials tossed in the trash immediately, Cook said. Residents should instead put unbagged items in the recycle can the city provides to each new resident, she said.

The effort to increase recycling awareness is part of the city’s efforts to improve, McCulley said.

Recycling, she said, is part of being a good community and being “good stewards of our resources.”