Northwest Arkansas throws away thousands of tons of recyclable materials a year by putting so many bottles, cans and cardboard boxes in trash cans instead of recycling bins, local officials say.
If those materials were recycled, the extra tons could be enough to justify and sustain a long-discussed, multimillion-dollar regional recycling facility, based on estimates given to Fayetteville earlier this year as the city worked on a plan for sending less to the region’s Eco-Vista landfill west of Springdale.
Waste district leaders and other experts said such a facility could allow the region to boost recycling even further by unifying a fractured recycling market and making it possible to recycle more challenging materials, such as the plastic used in yogurt cups. In fact, the region would need that kind of facility and more people and more trucks devoted to the job to handle any increase in recycling, several officials said.
“They’re handling about all they can handle right now,” said George Wheatley, public affairs for Waste Management in Arkansas, which hauls recyclables for Springdale, Centerton and other cities, and owns the Rogers facility where much of it goes as well as the landfill.
Tallying the Recycling
Benton and Washington counties, their cities and the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, recycle at least 20,000 tons of plastics, paper, metal cans, cardboard and glass a year, according to data from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and estimates from several cities or their haulers for primarily residential collections in 2015 or last year.
Fayetteville and Siloam Springs collect and sell residential recyclables on their own while Bentonville, Rogers and Springdale each contract with commercial waste haulers.
The yearly figure doesn’t include yard waste that’s composted or items such as electronics that aren’t always accepted by different recyclers. It’s also incomplete. Inland Waste Solutions, the company providing waste and recycling pickups in Rogers, didn’t respond to several calls asking for comment in the last two weeks. Rogers’ city-managed drop-off center, for its part, took in about 1,700 tons last year.
Fayetteville recycles the most among the area’s biggest cities, according to recycling numbers provided, turning in more than 6,000 tons a year. But Bella Vista stands out in terms of amount per resident.
A curbside recycling program recently ended there because so few homes took part, Mayor Peter Christie said, leaving only the independent, nonprofit drop-off center in the city just off Interstate 49. The place takes in roughly 2,500 tons a year, most of it cardboard volunteers pick up from restaurants and other nearby businesses.
That comes to around 170 pounds per Bella Vista resident, compared to about 150 pounds for Fayetteville and 80 for Bentonville.
The center pays a few staff members from what it earns selling the material to companies that use it to make new products. It gives around $100,000 that’s left over a year to area charities, said Paul Poulides, a member of the center’s board. The center’s volunteers earn $6 per hour for the charities of their choice.
“People, they want to give,” he said earlier this month as a trailer load of cardboard arrived at the center. “Everybody gains.”
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