Council Hears Report On Mesquite Recycling Program

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

The Mesquite City Council heard a report about the city’s ongoing recycle program during a meeting held on Tuesday evening, March 14. Due to several inquiries from members of the public in recent months, City Engineer Travis Anderson was asked to give details on the current program.

Anderson reported that the city’s recycling program has been in place since 2001 and has always been provided as a free service to area residents. It consists of two parts: a residential curbside pickup program and larger bins available at two central locations in the city where residents can bring their waste for recycling.

For curbside service, residents can simply request to receive two 35 gallon recycling containers, he said. The first, in a gray container, is for aluminum/metal. The second, a blue container, is for newspaper and other paper products. These are picked up once a month at the curb, Anderson said.

Anderson acknowledged that participation is very low for this program. He said that with 7,587 residential trash disposal customers in the city only 275 have aluminum/metal recycling containers. Only 397 utilize recylcing containers for paper products, he added.

“We only have 3.62 percent of our disposal accounts that are utilizing this free service for paper,” Anderson said. “And aluminum is only 5.2 percent. So that is not many people.”

As an alternative, residents could also take their recycling waste to large 30 yard bins located in the parking lots of both Walmart and Smiths Market, Anderson said. Each of these locations has two bins: one which is separated into aluminum, plastic and paper compartments; and the other one is designated for cardboard only. The first bin is emptied 2-3 times per week. The one for cardboard is emptied four times per week.

Anderson explained that all of the recycled waste is picked up and taken to the Mesquite landfill located to the north of the city about four miles past the Lincoln County line. From there it is compacted into bales and transported to recyling plants in Las Vegas, he said.

Anderson emphasized that this recycling program had never been a big money maker for the city. “Any revenue that we get from that material, the freight costs of transport offsets most of it,” he said.

As an example, Anderson said that last year the city had collected 38 tons of plastic through the recycling bins at Smiths and Walmart. In that period, the city cleared only $11.15 for the year when the freight costs to Las Vegas were factored in. But when the haul costs from the parking lots to the landfill were factored in, the city experiences a net loss of $9,089 per year, he said.

“Of course, that is not the whole story,” Anderson said. “There is the big factor of becoming more sustainable, it is true. And that is a good thing. But we do have to keep an eye on the bottom line as well.”

Anderson calculated that only 5 percent of the city’s plastic waste was going into the recycle program. The other 95 percent – approximately 732 tons of plastic – was going into the landfill, he said.
“That is a problem and I think we could do better than that,” Anderson said.

But even that amount of waste was minimal compared to the total of waste going to the landfill.
“Our last full year we had 43,316 tons of trash delivered to the landfill,” Anderson said. “So even if I was able to capture 100 percent of the plastic waste for recycling, it still only accounts for 1.8 percent of the total delivery intake up there.”

The business outlook on the recycling of aluminum was only slightly better. Because aluminum is more valuable than paper, the city cleared about $8,900 in revenues for aluminum after freight costs. But adding in the local haul costs, the venture ends up with a loss of $6,200, Anderson said.

Worst of all was the cardboard program. Because of the huge volume of cardboard being recycled in the city revenues after freight costs were at $20,700 last year. But because the cardboard is being hauled four times per week it drastically increases the haul cost, Anderson said. So it ended up being a net loss to the city of nearly $23,000, he said.

“The city will continue to do a recycling program because it is the right thing to do,” Anderson said. “The question is to what magnitude the city council wishes to go. Is it keeping with our same plan? Or something more?”

Anderson said that the entire operation of the landfill, including recycling, comes from the general fund account of the city. “Any money that we obligate more into recycling takes away from the other aspects of the city,” he said. “That will affect all of us.”

During public comment period, a few people stood to advocate for an expansion of the recycle program.

Jake Worden, owner of The Worden restaurant, said that his business goes through “a ton” of unused plastic.
“It just upsets me how much that we throw away that gets dumped into that landfill,” he said. “There needs to be kind of a logical thinking about this that none of us has a recycle bin for plastic.”

Mesquite resident Ron Shackleford was amazed by the lack of participation in the recycling program. “Why is this number so low?” he asked. “The only thing I can think of is that people have no idea that the city distributes aluminum bins and paper bins free of charge that can be picked up curbside from the home.”

Shackleford said that he would be happy to volunteer efforts to start an educational campaign to better inform residents on what services are offered.

City council members agreed that a community awareness campaign might be helpful to let people know about their options.
“If we are not making money on aluminum recycling then we have to be doing it wrong,” said Council member Wes Boger. “Maybe something in our formula is flawed. It might be because of such a small amount of people are participating.”

Boger proposed that a study might be done to see what the profit and loss might be if there were 20-50 houses per mile of pickup route rather than just a handful. “Would it be profitable then?” he asked. “Because I just don’t know how this can’t be profitable.”

Boger asked that the matter be studied further and then be brought back to the council for more discussion.