Municipal recycling centers, in theory, are a good thing — they make recycling convenient for residents and keep things out of the landfill that can be repurposed; however, several cities have had to remove their recycling centers because of problems, while others have expanded their recycling areas.

The Municipal spoke to city officials from cities that are doing both to see what their experiences have been.

Two cities that have removed their recycling centers include League City, Texas, and Nappanee, Ind.

Nappanee Mayor Phil Jenkins shared the history of its recycling program. He said it started a recycling program in the 1980s with mainly newspapers. In 1989-1990, the city added glass and aluminum. The recycling center was at the street department’s property. In 2001, as a result of a Leadership Academy project, Nappanee investigated curbside recycling but “decided it wasn’t financially feasible for the company at that time.”

Additionally, a local grocery store had some recycling bins in its parking lot but wanted to remove them. In 2012, Ben Leavitt, who is now a city council member, worked as an intern in the former mayor’s office. One of his duties was to propose a site for the construction of a recycling facility. It was decided on Oakland Avenue, which was close to where the grocery store was located.

“Fast forward 10 years and the Elkhart County Solid Waste District consolidated and went from 15 recycling centers down to five,” he said.

Around that same time, two adjacent counties — Kosciusko County and Marshall County — closed their recycling centers.

“We were inundated at our site,” he said. This caused problems because people were abusing it, not keeping the recyclables clean and not being responsible when the dumpsters were full. Instead, they kept dumping until the dumpsters overflowed or began dumping outside the containers.

“It’s unfortunate — we weren’t able to keep it,” Jenkins said. “We know we were getting recyclables in from a three-county area. We want to provide opportunities for our residents.”

So, earlier this year, Nappanee closed the recycling center down and instituted curbside recycling for residents.

“So far, it seems to be going well. We’ve had a lot of participation, and it’s eliminated some trash. People, when given a choice, will do the right thing. They’ve been keeping the recyclables clean and not intermingled with trash,” he said.

The city is currently picking up the extra cost of curbside recycling. “We’ll see how long we can maintain that — we may have to gradually shift it to the residents,” Jenkins said. “We received a grant from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to do this as a pilot program, and it’s helped to offset some of the cost.”

The mayor said even before the counties closed their recycling centers there were problems. Goodwill had a container that had to be pulled because people were not respecting the rules and requirements. He noted, “It’s unfortunate because it’s a good organization trying to do the right thing.”

Jenkins added, “Society has gotten to where we collect more junk, and we don’t know what to do with it, so we dump it.”

While offering convenience, online shopping sites like Amazon have created more cardboard.

Jenkins said, “I’d like to explore expanding recycling for things that have a value like electronics, for example, but I’m not sure how we’d fund it or staff it — and what happens when the market demand goes down?”

As for the site of the former recycling center, Nappanee is considering possibly making it a trailhead for the nearby Art Path.

Jenkins summed it up: “It’s all about being sustainable and trying to do the right thing for the environment and the economy and trying to make it all balance.”

League City, Texas, also had to close its recycling center for similar reasons. Communications Director Sarah Osborne said the city was dealing with illegal dumping and trash being intermingled with the recycling, contaminating the whole bin.

“It wasn’t working. We were getting hazardous materials like paint cans, motor oil and TVs.” She said workers set up surveillance to find out who was dumping the hazardous materials and realized the bins were getting items in from other cities.

League City also has curbside recycling, which had been offered even before closing the recycling center. Osborne said the city spends a lot of time educating residents about what can and cannot be recycled so they’re not contaminating the whole bin.

“Dirty pizza boxes, for example, can’t be recycled. We’ve placed stickers on the bins,” she said.

And because League City was getting so many hazardous materials, it began curbside recycling for hazardous materials four times a year, saying residents just need to call the trash vendor to set it up. In addition, the city has two big events a year where residents can drive through and drop off hazardous materials.

The city is picking up the cost of the curbside recycling, and she said League City has two trash collection days a week — once for just trash and the second time for both trash and recycling.

Expanding services

A couple of cities have expanded portions of their recycling programs, including Sioux City, Iowa, and Pell City, Ala.

Arah Montagne, environmental services manager for Sioux City, said the city has curbside recycling for its residents but recently decided to add recycling bins to eight locations downtown. She explained this was a new pilot program that was supposed to start last July, but actually started this April.

Getting the contract in order was the holdup. “It sat in legal limbo for a while,” she said.

Montagne explained, “The idea was we have so many more new downtown living in lofts, we wanted to try giving them more recycling opportunities as well as the downtown businesses with their shipping boxes.”

Since the downtown lofts are mainly rentals, some don’t have recycling bins, and Montagne said, “There’s been a large outcry from people who want it.”

Glass recycling is different, and Sioux City has six separate purple ripple bin locations for glass recycling. The rest of the recycling is collected in single-stream containers. Montagne said she thinks the city pays a little more to have it sorted out at the recycling facility.

The pilot program is a collaborative effort between Downtown Partners, the city of Sioux City, the Environmental Advisory Board and Gill Hauling to install eight new recycling containers. They can be found at: Tyson Events Center; Fifth and Water streets; Pearl Street Park; Third and Pierce streets; Convention Center on Jones Street; Fifth and Court streets; Fourth and Iowa streets; and the STF Expo Center parking lot.

The containers are brightly colored and designed by local artist Jessica Hammond of Brutal Doodles. Gill Hauling donated the bins and the wraps Hammond designed.

So far, Montagne said there have been no issues like the previous cities were reporting — except for the containers filling up before they were scheduled to be picked up. She said they were scheduled to be picked up once a month, and by the third week, they were full and had to be picked up.

Montagne said Downtown Partners, a community action group that works with the chamber of commerce and local businesses, helped find the locations for the bins.

“A lot of them are on city property, but if they were privately owned, they got permission,” she said.

“Jessica did the artwork pro bono — (although) we gave her a gift card for helping us out. She does all the artwork for Alley Art Festival, and it’s great to have something like that on the containers,” Montagne said.

Sioux City is hoping the beautiful artwork on the containers will discourage graffiti. The pilot program is for a year, and officials will re-evaluate at that time. She said if the city has issues in certain locations, it can pull those containers or move them. If they’re damaged or have graffiti on them, they can be replaced.

“We hope none of those things happen,” she said.

She shared that one of the purple ripple glass containers keeps getting vandalized, but it’s only one location.

One lesson learned in her 20-plus years of working in municipalities, according to Montagne, is: “If you don’t try it, you won’t know if it’s working or not. I didn’t have high hopes going into this — I thought we’d get all co-mingled, non-usable recyclables, but it’s all been good waste. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how well it’s going. We just collected 3 tons this month and all good waste. It’s working so far, and I hope we can keep it up, but if we hadn’t tried it, we wouldn’t know.”

Pell City, Ala.

Contrary to the other cities, Pell City switched from curbside recycling to a centralized recycling site, but not totally by choice. City Manager Brian Muenger explained his city’s history with recycling, stating that in 2008, the city offered curbside recycling through a third-party waste contract. He said residents used an 18-gallon tote for their recyclables until 2016 and then switched to a 64-gallon can in 2017.

“In 2019, approximately 1,400 of the city’s 5,500 households were participating, and that number stayed steady through the end of the contract,” Muenger reported.

The city issued a competitive bid in 2022 that included curbside recycling, but no companies provided a compliant bid to continue it. Muenger said, “They cited a limited market for recyclables in the Greater Birmingham area and an increase in non-recyclables being deposited in bins.”

Since then, the city has been exploring options to return the service to residents through a consolidated recycling point. Within a year, Pell City formed a partnership with its neighbors in Calhoun County, and in 2023, they signed a cooperative agreement.

“Currently, Calhoun County provides the city with a recycling trailer free of charge through state grant funds. The city is responsible for staffing and monitoring the recycling point and for transporting collected recyclables to the Calhoun County MRF,” Muenger related, adding the city staffs the sites Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Citizens can access them at the same locations as the bulk waste roll-off dumpsters, which already had good utilization.

Muenger stated, “We’ve found that a consolidated site works very well for our residents. Since our centralized recycling is staffed and monitored, we have experienced fewer instances of misuse. While we do hope to return to curbside recycling when market conditions are more favorable, spoilage due to improper materials placement in recycling bins was problematic during curbside service.”

The recycling trailers are sorted with separate bins for cardboard, plastic, mixed paper and aluminum.

He said about 25% of the community was active in the city’s recycling program when the new solid waste contract took effect. So, they really wanted to continue to provide the service to their residents.

Muenger said, “No matter what type of recycling service you provide, educating the public about the proper use of the program is vital, especially if recycling sites are unmonitored. Providing residents with convenient options for disposing of bulk waste is also an effective means of limiting spoilage and illegal dumping.

“Our usage has been growing steadily, and we are applying for additional trailers to support expansion,” he said.

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