Deerfield’s determined to bring back recycling

What Deerfield Beach residents put in blue recycling bins is being emptied into the same trucks heading to the landfill with householdwaste.

Mayor Bill Ganz filmed a video explaining why the city suspended its 20-year-old recycling programlast week. But it’s only temporary, Ganz said.

“We need to rethink how we’re approaching recycling,” Ganz said. “We’re working on a new programthat’s going to be economically sustainable and environmentally friendly very soon.”

City estimates showed it could save up to $800,000 by not recycling. Some residents are aghast that their city— one of the first to implement curbside recycling— went thisway.

“To let this happen … is mismanagement of our city government,” said Paula Bloom, a military and retail industry retiree.

Seventeen cities are in the same situation. WasteManagement bought the recycling business of Sun Bergeron, and WasteManagement’s proposal increased the recycling fee of those cities by about $45 per ton, costing $96 per ton. Added to that, cities will be charged an extra handling fee for recycling truckloads that have more than 10 percent “contamination.”

Cities get back some of that cost from the payment for recycling materials, but the price being paid has fallen exponentially due to forces in the commodities market. Itmeans that instead of the $50 per ton that

Coral Springs and other cities were receiving, cities are now receiving about $3 per ton for recyclable materials. And that price could drop even more.

With a 30 to 35 percent contamination rate in the 7,500 tons of “recyclables” that Deerfield collected last year, those priceswere simply unsustainable, Ganz said. Sunrise leaders also balked at the cost and opted to burn its trash rather than pay the increased recycling costs.

Ganz said that, when recycling returns, the city will be launching a new program to educate people about what goes in the blue bin and what shouldn’t, to stop the contamination. Too often, for example, aluminum cans packed in plastic bags are in there — and that sort of contamination costs, he said.

Unrinsed plastic containers,

wood and even used diapers have been among the items contaminating the recycling load, city officials say.

“We have certainly got people’s attention with this and I look at this as a good thing,” Ganz said. “People will realize the situationwe are in and it will help them change theway they use things and the way they recycle things.”

Deerfield resident Avis Swenson said the whole controversy has been eyeopening. She didn’t know that pizza boxes that absorb some of the pizza oils were not recyclable, for example.

“Even people like me with good intentionswere trying to recycle but not recycling properly,” she said.

ageggis@sunsentinel.com, 561-243-6624, or @AnneBoca . Visit our Deerfield Beach community page at SunSentinel.com /FacebookDeerfield.