Boone County makes 'unprecedented' move to suspend Ashland recycling program - KOMU 8
Boone County makes 'unprecedented' move to suspend Ashland recycling program | Mid-Missouri News | komu.com
BOONE COUNTY - At the beginning of 2023, the Boone County Solid Waste Department struggled with a significant influx of "contamination" mixed in the recycling across the county.
But new data shows the city of Ashland topped the contamination charts.
"You'll always have folks that see an empty dumpster and take advantage of it," Ashland City Administrator Kyle Michel said.
The county's Solid Waste Department temporarily suspended Ashland's recycling program in January, according to previous KOMU 8 reporting.
The county removed its recycling container located at 5275 Redtail Drive in Ashland and then redirected it to the dump due to the amount of trash that crews found in the bin, according to the city of Ashland's Facebook account.
This is an unprecedented measure, according to Thaddeus Yonke, a land use senior planner, solid waste coordinator and a traffic planner for Boone County.
"We haven't suspended [recycling] service temporarily before," Yonke said.
Michel told KOMU 8 News the holiday season typically brings in more trash, and "illegal dumping," which he defined as when people put non-recyclable materials in the recycling container.
Acceptable recycling materials include newspaper, tin cans, aluminum, plastic and cardboard, according to Ashland's city services website.
"The entire recycling lot was just full of trash," Michel said, as he described what the recycling lot looked like when he and other volunteers helped clean up before the county removed the bin. "The bins were overflowing [with trash]."
"We [Ashland] don't have a Solid Waste staff, so it's not like the facility is managed on a daily basis," Michel said. "We're just kind of cleaning it up when we notice it needs some help."
Ashland's recycling center, located at 5275 Redtail Drive, no longer has a recycling container.
Despite the county's suspension of Ashland's recycling program, the city has another recycling container that it buys through a third-party contractor, Republic Services.
Republic hauls the solid waste that it collects from Ashland's recycling container. Republic also sorts through the recycling in a Jefferson City processing plant, according to Michel.
Meanwhile, Boone County's system has a few extra steps in between. The county has a third-party contract with T-Mac Solid Waste, which hauls the recycling container from Ashland to Columbia three times a week.
The county has another third-party contract with the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in Columbia, which is where the solid waste is sorted and processed.
Nicholas Paul, a MRF superintendent, said his crews, which separate illegal dumping by hand, were fed up.
"That [costs] more money for us," Paul said.
The MRF is required to have less than 5% contamination after they process the recycling pile. If there's more than 5%, MRF is fined $500.
Paul confirmed to KOMU 8 News that when the county crews decided to pull the bin in Ashland, they found at least 25% of the recycling was contaminated.
Before the county removed its bin, Paul said crews would haul the container around three times per week.
Boone County spent around $119,300 on recycling sites throughout the county in 2020, according to the county's budget reports:
- $25,500 on Ashland
- $26,700 on Hallsville
- $4,600 on Hartsburg
- $18,000 on Harrisburg
- $10,100 on Sturgeon
- $9,200 on Rocheport
- $25,200 on Centralia (Centralia reimburses the county for its recycling expenditures.)
Michel said he pitched a potential solution that could help reduce illegal dumping: adding signs directly on the recycling containers with acceptable materials. Currently, Ashland has signs outside of the recycling lot, but Michel said he hopes the new signs serve as another reminder.
"That way people can see that a little more clearly, so they know what actually should go in the containers," Michel said.
But Yonke said Ashland might be recycling one problem for another.
"We'd have to resign all of the containers though," Yonke said. "That's one [out] of the fleet. And so we don't know which container will get put there."
Yonke said there are about nine containers that cycle through Ashland.
"We'd like to get folks to do the right thing and give them the information and the tools to do the right thing," Michel said.
Both Michel and Yonke said it could be weeks or even months before the county returns the recycling bin in Ashland.
The city has issued an online survey as it explores recycling service options.