Fort Smith plans to restart recycling

City directors say contractor ready

FORT SMITH — The city’s Sanitation Department will begin sending recyclable material to recycling company 3rd Rock Recycling beginning Monday, the city announced Friday.

City directors voted Tuesday to hire 3rd Rock of Webb City, Mo., and Pen Sales of Kansas City, Mo., to provide recycling services, the first formal arrangement the city has had with a recycling company since September 2014.

Officials with the company told directors 3rd Rock will collect, process and transport the recyclable material while Pen Sales will find markets and sell the material.

The contract specified the companies had 30 days from approval of the contract to find a location and begin accepting recyclables from the city. A news release from the city said the companies have secured a location and were ready to accept material Monday.

“The city and 3rd Rock will continue investigating long-term solutions to make the city’s recycling program more sustainable,” the news release said, “including the installation of sorting equipment in the local facility and the creation of the city’s own materials recovery facility at the landfill property.”

The recycling company will accept the material at its facility where it will take about three weeks to install baling equipment. The material delivered starting Monday will be stockpiled inside the facility until it can be compacted, baled and loaded onto trailers for transport to the materials recovery facility, the release said.

At the material recovery facility, it will be sorted into various recyclable commodities that then can be marketed to mills for reuse.

The release said residents are encouraged to place household recyclables in the recycling carts for curbside collection on their designated day.

According to the release, items acceptable for the household recycling program include newspaper, office paper, chipboard such as cereal boxes, cardboard, plastics especially plastic bottles, and metals such as steel or aluminum cans. Items should be as clean and free of contaminants as possible.

Items that shouldn’t be included in residential recycling carts include glass, Styrofoam, plastic grocery bags or any contaminated items. Those items should go into the regular trash containers.

Fort Smith officials drew criticism last month for a lack of transparency after an announcement the city had been dumping into the landfill recyclable material that residents had been separating from the regular trash and putting in separate containers for pickup by recycling trucks and employees.

Fort Smith had taken some of the recyclables to a recycling company in Clarksville, but the company could accept only a small portion of what the city delivered and refused a year ago to accept any recyclables from Fort Smith.

This week, a city resident, Jennifer Merriott, sued the city in Sebastian County Circuit Court charging that the city misspent money residents had paid for recycling in their monthly sanitation fees and asked a court to order the city to repay that portion of the fees to trash customers.

The release said residents are encouraged to place household recyclables in the recycling carts for curbside collection on their designated day.