RECYCLING COSTING DAYTON NEARLY AS MUCH AS TRASH

City aims to cut down on item contamination through education.

The city of Dayton will soon start spending nearly as much to dispose of recycling as it spends disposing of trash.

Recycling remains the right thing to do for environmental reasons, but the cost savings has diminished because of China’s heightened standards when it comes to recycling contamination, officials say.

The city will significantly increase education and outreach to try to cut down on recycling contamination, because that is the main driver of higher removal costs, said Dayton City Manager Shelley Dickstein.

“It requires a great deal of hand sorting, with regards to those things that people think might be recyclable, but actually are not,” Dickstein said.

The city of Dayton recently approved a one-year contract with Rumpke that increases the disposal fee for recycling to $35 per ton, up from $15 per ton in the last contract.

The new contract with Rumpke, if renewed for a second year, will increase the recycling disposal fee to $40 per ton. The city spends $38.25 for every ton of trash that is disposed.

Between 2012 and 2015, Rumpke collected 28,837 tons of recycling in the city of Dayton.

Dayton estimates this saved the city more than $2 million in waste removal fees.

But Dayton’s recycling tonnage has decreased every since 2014, as recycling costs have increased.

The tonnage has decreased even as participation in the recycling program has grown every year, even though overall it remains very low, Dickstein said.

About 34,633 Dayton households now have blue recycling bins, which is up 44% from 2012, city data show.

The city says the recycling program saved it $76,335 last year, and $81,577 in 2018.

The program cost the city $83,655 in 2019, but it city expects to pay about $132,100 this year.

Too much recycling is ending up in the landfill because it is contaminated with trash, officials say.

“What we mean by the term contamination is we need the right things to go in that blue container,” Dayton’s director of public works Fred Stovall said last year. “We don’t want you to put your trash in the blue container.”

One common issue is that people put their recycling into plastic bags, which are not recycleable.

Contact this reporter at 937-2250749 or email Cornelius.Frolik@ coxinc.com.