Recycling news irks Fort Smith residents

FORT SMITH — Residents who participate in the city’s recycling program discovered earlier this week the toilet paper rolls, milk jugs and newspapers they separated from the trash over the past six months have ended up in the city’s landfill anyway.

Some of those people showed up at a town hall meeting after the city Board of Directors meeting Tuesday to voice their disappointment the city didn’t notify them sooner they were wasting their time sorting their solid waste, as the recycling operations on the city’s end had come to a halt.

Robbie Wilson called the city’s lack of notification duplicitous. He was upset city officials knew recycling material was going to the landfill while encouraging residents to continue to put out their items for recycling in separate bins and sending out recycling trucks to pick it up.

“In what universe, in your opinion, is that not active deception?” he asked City Administrator Carl Geffken.

Geffken said in the directors meeting he took responsibility for not communicating to the city sanitation department had been

taking material residents put out for recycling to the landfill since November, when Green Source Recycling of Clarksville stopped accepting the city’s recycling waste.

Geffken said he was distracted by other matters, such as the city’s sewer-system consent decree with the federal government and dealing with the collapse of the River Valley Sports Complex project, and failed to ensure residents were informed of the loss of a recycling service.

“I apologize for not making that known sooner so everyone could understand what was happening,” Geffken said.

Lacey Jennen, who also spoke at the town hall meeting, said she was shocked, saddened and puzzled when she heard the recycling efforts her family avidly pursue have been wasted.

She said her family recycles everything it can. Shampoo bottles, “milk jugs galore,” even the tags off new clothes go into their recycling bin she rolls down to the curb each week. She said the family recycles more than it puts out as garbage.

Jennen’s family will continue to separate out its recyclables and keep putting the bin out on the curb, as the city encourages, to keep in the habit for when recycling resumes, she said.

“I hope this is a learning experience that we do want to know, that we do want to be informed,” she said.

Even though customers hadn’t been informed, Geffken said, sanitation department director Mark Schlievert has spent the past six months searching for short-term and long-term solutions to the problem.

A news release from the city on Monday said of two responses received in January to requests for proposals, only one offered single-stream, or unsorted, recycling.

The company, Marck Recycling’s Fort Smith plant, proposed a rate “significantly higher than the cost of landfill disposal,” the release said.

The rate would result in a net operating loss to the sanitation department of $230,000 or more. Negotiation with Marck is continuing, according to the release.

Now the city charges all of its 35,000 household sanitation customers $13.28 a month, and there’s no charge for recycling. Geffken said he wanted to find a way to maintain free recycling, noting some cities charge customers nearly $6 a month to recycle.

The effect on the landfill of adding the recyclables is slight. Geffken said of the 118,320 tons of waste dumped at the landfill over the past six months, 1,478 tons, or about 1.25 percent, was recyclable material.

Deputy City Administrator Jeff Dingman said 2 percent to 3 percent of the city’s sanitation customers recycle.

The city got into the predicament in November when Green Source Recycling of Clarksville stopped accepting recyclable material from Fort Smith. It has been accepting the city’s recyclable material at no cost other than the city’s cost of transporting it since September 2014, when the city’s recycling contract with Smurfit KAPPA of Fort Smith expired.

Recyclers who will take single-stream recycling material are more difficult to find these days, Dingman said, because the price of some recycling material — such as glass, metal and plastic — has dropped.

The market for paper and cardboard is strong and companies will pay for them, he said. But Fort Smith probably would have to pay for the glass, metal and plastic it would send along with the paper.

Geffken said the city is exploring a possible long-term solution of setting up its own material recycling facility, possibly at the city’s landfill and possibly partnering with the Sebastian County Regional Solid Waste Management District and other cities in the region.

Geffken said he will schedule a discussion on recycling with city directors next month.

The effect on the landfill of adding the recyclables is slight. Geffken said of the 118,320 tons of waste dumped at the landfill over the past six months, 1,478 tons, or about 1.25 percent, was recyclable material.