If you’ve been separating plastic from the rest of your garbage and hauling it to a convenience center for recycling, your efforts have been fruitless.
For the past two months, the county has been dumping that plastic in with the rest of its garbage and is no longer recycling it.
“This is not something we want to do, but we can no longer find a company that will take our plastic for recycling,” said Warren County sanitation director Steve Hillis. “So the plastic is going to a landfill until we can find somebody else to take it.”
Hillis says the plastic recycling bins remain at three convenience centers because people have finally gotten in the habit of using them.
“People want to recycle and we want them to recycle,” said Hillis. “I hate to change anything because people have finally gotten to where they use them regularly and we are actively looking for other places to go with the plastic. I don’t want to take them away then find somewhere else we can recycle plastic.”
Plastic recycling has been offered at the convenience centers at Morrison, Fairview and the Fairgrounds for more than five years. Hillis said finding a company that will take the plastic has always been a challenge. The county has used a company in Coffee County twice and a company in White County once. Those companies are no longer accepting plastics.
The Standard talked to a recycling expert in Coffee County who was willing to provide information but did not want to be quoted. He said the process of recycling plastics is extremely labor intensive and has been an endeavor which has lost money in recent years.
The recycling expert said a plastic container such as a milk carton must have the label removed before it can be recycled. It also must have the lid separated from the carton since they are different types of plastic. The containers then have to be washed to remove any residue.
From there, the plastic is grinded into bales. Then it’s made into resin pellets and those pellets can be used in other applications. With all the labor required to recycle, and with the plunging price of oil used to make plastic, the recycling expert said it’s cheaper to start from scratch.
Hillis is still hopeful Warren County can find a business willing to take its plastic. The county continues to recycle alumi-num cans, oil, newsprint and cardboard. He said the county is paid for all of those materials but has never been paid for plastic.