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Terrence Haynes, an inspector with The City of Toledo, looks into a city recycling bin to make sure that proper items are being recycled at a home on Balkan Pl. on June 26, 2017.
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City officials hope new facility can curb cost of recycling

The Blade

City officials hope new facility can curb cost of recycling

City officials are looking for ways to save money on transporting and processing recyclables, but market changes have prompted them to scale back plans for a new recycling facility in Toledo.

The Lucas County Solid Waste Management District has been moving toward building a materials recovery facility, commonly referred to as a MRF, which receives and sorts recyclables by material.

Currently the city’s combined recyclables are transported to a number of facilities for processing, but the majority head to Oberlin, in Lorain County, said Paul Rasmusson, the city’s director of public service. He said he anticipates the city will spend about $2 million on transportation and processing this year. If they built a materials recovery facility in Toledo, he believes those costs would shrink considerably.

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But instead of sticking to the original plan and building a full-blown MRF — one that would separate paper, aluminum, glass, and plastics from recycling batches and package them for re-use accordingly — the district likely will need to build a scaled-down, hybrid MRF instead.

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Mr. Rasmusson at a committee hearing on Thursday told city councilmen the global market of recycling materials “is extremely depressed.” China this year stopped taking many materials, causing some communities in the U.S. to cease recycling altogether because it has become too expensive.

A hybrid MRF would sort only fiber, cardboard, and loose paper because those materials can be processed and sold locally. It also would remove trash and residue, and the city would transport the remaining recyclable materials to other facilities that can process them.

“It’s not foreseeable that the county and the solid waste management district would build the rest of a complete MRF beyond the hybrid until the global economy and the local economy for the remaining products like plastic and glass returns to a profitable state,” Mr. Rasmusson said. “At this point in time it will be an investment that could not be returned upon to build an entire facility,” he said.

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Councilman Sandy Spang questioned whether it was prudent to build even a hybrid MRF if there is no telling when the market for recyclables will rebound.

“If commodity prices continue to fall and there continues to be this international glut of commodities sitting waiting, could we find that the MRF didn’t give us a lot of relief?” she asked.

Mr. Rasmusson said there are several benefits, including the fact that without it the city would have to start throwing recyclables in the landfill if officials wanted to cut back on transportation costs without a MRF. Extending the life of the landfill is valuable, reducing transportation expenses is a benefit, and there’s a market for the recycled paper and cardboard the MRF would sort, he said.

“Knowing that we pay a lot of money to transport this 80 to 90 miles away, knowing that some percentage of that is just garbage and contamination, and the fact that those two items can be greatly reduced, if not eliminated, economically we will benefit,” Mr. Rasmusson said.

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Officials estimate building a MRF will cost between $5 million and $7 million, and the district soon will have enough money to do it.

The waste management district has been collecting $5 per year in property taxes on all developed property in the county since March, 2014, a practice that was put in place in lieu of raising landfill disposal fees. The fee covers the district’s services including education and outreach, drop-off recycling, litter prevention, administration, and more, but it also will help pay for the MRF.

Since 2014 the fund has accumulated $4.2 million, according to Lucas County Sanitary Engineer Jim Shaw.

City and county officials have been looking at existing buildings they could retrofit to a hybrid-MRF and at properties where they could build from scratch, though they have not settled on a location. The plan is to have the new recycling center up and running by the end of 2021, Mr. Rasmusson said.

In the interim, Toledo’s costs to recycle continue to creep up. The city paid ReCommunity about $34,000 for recycling processing services for the month of January in 2016. In January, 2017, the monthly cost was about $146,000, and it now costs between $140,000 to $175,000 per month, city figures show.

“These costs have been crippling,” Councilman Nick Komives said. “They come from the general fund.”

He expressed support for building the MRF and asked if there were any cost-cutting measures the city should pursue in the meantime.

Mr. Rasmusson said there has been an increase in processing charges but there’s also been a significant decrease in the value of the materials that are being recycled and re-sold. He said the per-ton processing cost Toledo is paying is comparable to what other cities are paying, and there are efforts to cut expenses elsewhere.

The waste management district purchased a large compactor that will allow trucks to fit 20 to 21 tons of material in each load they transport to processing facilities, compared to the 12.5 tons they fit now. Mr. Rasmusson said he estimates that will save about $400,000 annually on transportation.

City council on Tuesday will vote on whether to extend the city’s recycling processing contract with ReCommunity through 2021, the year they expect the MRF to open.

First Published June 20, 2019, 11:37 p.m.

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Terrence Haynes, an inspector with The City of Toledo, looks into a city recycling bin to make sure that proper items are being recycled at a home on Balkan Pl. on June 26, 2017.  (The Blade)  Buy Image
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