Montag
02-09-2009, 06:31 AM
Demand for recycling rises as prices plummet
By KAREN DILLON and FINN BULLERS
The Kansas City Star
http://www.kansascity.com/703/story/1024537.html
excerpt:
Now that you’re finally an enthusiastic recycler, putting out your bins each week and congratulating yourself on your Earth-consciousness, it may be about to get much harder.
Some recycling centers have closed, others are endangered, and weekly curbside recycling is threatened in several cities. Fees you pay could be going up, too.
“It’s extremely difficult now,” said Phelps Murdock, president of Bridging the Gap, which manages recycling centers in the area. “We don’t know what is going to happen.”
The problem: As the economy nosedived last fall, the global recycling markets went into a free fall, too.
The China recycling markets that take a large portion of the United States’ recyclables closed their doors. Fewer people were buying televisions, electronics and other goods, and that meant a sharp decrease in the need for packaging materials, said Ed Skernolis, acting executive director of the National Recycling Coalition.
As a result, prices for recyclables sank like a lead balloon. Take cardboard, for example. In August, it was running as high as $140 a ton, but now it’s as low as $20 a ton.
“When the economy goes south, commodity markets go south,” Skernolis said. “It’s all tied together.”
Kansas City area residents now are facing higher prices to recycle and fewer places and times to do it.
“Everybody’s ox is getting gored,” said Murdock of Bridging the Gap, which had five recycling centers but now has three. “There is almost no value to any recycled materials right now.”
A few ways recycling could change:
•Kansas City could slash its curbside recycling pickup times by half. The city manager’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2010 would reduce pickups to every other week. Currently, Deffenbaugh Industries Inc. hauls recyclables once a week.
Deffenbaugh officials recently told the city they planned to raise their curbside recycling fees by 27 percent. That means the city would have to pay $5 million in fiscal 2010 for weekly recycling, up from $3.5 million last year.
City officials are searching for ways to restructure the recycling program to reflect the market downturn. The city is hiring a consultant to help with that, City Manager Wayne Cauthen wrote in his recent budget letter to the mayor.
But the need for massive budget cuts this year in addition to the increase in recycling fees has put the city in a vise.
“The cost of continuing the curbside recycling program in face of the budget situation is just really difficult,” said Dennis Murphey, the city’s chief environmental officer. “We’re getting squeezed both ways.”
•Bridging the Gap, which operates volunteer-based recycling centers, also is facing extinction, Murdock said.
Most of the nonprofit’s funding for the centers comes from the city — $150,000 to operate them and $225,000 for environmental education. The city has not yet said whether it would continue that funding, Murdock said.
Bridging the Gap had to close a recycling center in Overland Park last month because it could not afford to pay Deffenbaugh to take the recyclables, Murdock said. It’s also possible that the Midtown Center — which the agency had closed because of complaints about traffic and was trying to relocate — may not reopen.
•Overland Park took over the former Bridging the Gap 119th Street recycling center but is paying Deffenbaugh to haul away the materials, said Jim Twigg, director of Overland Park’s Department of Health and Environment. The center’s future beyond this year is uncertain, he said.
The city-sponsored curbside recycling program also is continuing for now, although Twigg said its contract with Deffenbaugh expired at the end of December after Deffenbaugh wanted to raise prices. A solid-waste task force has been appointed to come up with a plan to re-establish a recycling program.
Deffenbaugh is continuing the program, but fees are likely to go up at some point, Twigg said.
•Shawnee, like Overland Park, let its contract with Deffenbaugh expire after it told the city it could no longer afford to provide curbside recycling. The price of recycling has remained the same for 15 years at $1.70 a household.
Shawnee decided to name a task force to negotiate the new politics of recycling and, like many other cities, rethink its go-green efforts.
The task force is to present its recommendations April 13. Until then, Deffenbaugh has agreed to keep collecting and not increase its prices.
Deffenbaugh said it is losing money now on recycling.
“The tons are still moving,” said Mike Clagett, a Deffenbaugh spokesman. “We are just not getting the value for the tons that we once did.”
Deffenbaugh is not being hurt as badly as some other recycling companies across the country, which have been forced to stockpile materials they cannot sell or not accept them anymore. Deffenbaugh has developed excellent business relations with its recycling dealers on the West Coast, said spokesman Tom Coffman.
Most of Deffenbaugh’s materials were shipped to China until the market collapsed.
Batliner Paper Co., which has The Kansas City Star’s recycling contract, said some materials are still moving in the markets, but others, such as cardboard, are starting to pile up.
By KAREN DILLON and FINN BULLERS
The Kansas City Star
http://www.kansascity.com/703/story/1024537.html
excerpt:
Now that you’re finally an enthusiastic recycler, putting out your bins each week and congratulating yourself on your Earth-consciousness, it may be about to get much harder.
Some recycling centers have closed, others are endangered, and weekly curbside recycling is threatened in several cities. Fees you pay could be going up, too.
“It’s extremely difficult now,” said Phelps Murdock, president of Bridging the Gap, which manages recycling centers in the area. “We don’t know what is going to happen.”
The problem: As the economy nosedived last fall, the global recycling markets went into a free fall, too.
The China recycling markets that take a large portion of the United States’ recyclables closed their doors. Fewer people were buying televisions, electronics and other goods, and that meant a sharp decrease in the need for packaging materials, said Ed Skernolis, acting executive director of the National Recycling Coalition.
As a result, prices for recyclables sank like a lead balloon. Take cardboard, for example. In August, it was running as high as $140 a ton, but now it’s as low as $20 a ton.
“When the economy goes south, commodity markets go south,” Skernolis said. “It’s all tied together.”
Kansas City area residents now are facing higher prices to recycle and fewer places and times to do it.
“Everybody’s ox is getting gored,” said Murdock of Bridging the Gap, which had five recycling centers but now has three. “There is almost no value to any recycled materials right now.”
A few ways recycling could change:
•Kansas City could slash its curbside recycling pickup times by half. The city manager’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2010 would reduce pickups to every other week. Currently, Deffenbaugh Industries Inc. hauls recyclables once a week.
Deffenbaugh officials recently told the city they planned to raise their curbside recycling fees by 27 percent. That means the city would have to pay $5 million in fiscal 2010 for weekly recycling, up from $3.5 million last year.
City officials are searching for ways to restructure the recycling program to reflect the market downturn. The city is hiring a consultant to help with that, City Manager Wayne Cauthen wrote in his recent budget letter to the mayor.
But the need for massive budget cuts this year in addition to the increase in recycling fees has put the city in a vise.
“The cost of continuing the curbside recycling program in face of the budget situation is just really difficult,” said Dennis Murphey, the city’s chief environmental officer. “We’re getting squeezed both ways.”
•Bridging the Gap, which operates volunteer-based recycling centers, also is facing extinction, Murdock said.
Most of the nonprofit’s funding for the centers comes from the city — $150,000 to operate them and $225,000 for environmental education. The city has not yet said whether it would continue that funding, Murdock said.
Bridging the Gap had to close a recycling center in Overland Park last month because it could not afford to pay Deffenbaugh to take the recyclables, Murdock said. It’s also possible that the Midtown Center — which the agency had closed because of complaints about traffic and was trying to relocate — may not reopen.
•Overland Park took over the former Bridging the Gap 119th Street recycling center but is paying Deffenbaugh to haul away the materials, said Jim Twigg, director of Overland Park’s Department of Health and Environment. The center’s future beyond this year is uncertain, he said.
The city-sponsored curbside recycling program also is continuing for now, although Twigg said its contract with Deffenbaugh expired at the end of December after Deffenbaugh wanted to raise prices. A solid-waste task force has been appointed to come up with a plan to re-establish a recycling program.
Deffenbaugh is continuing the program, but fees are likely to go up at some point, Twigg said.
•Shawnee, like Overland Park, let its contract with Deffenbaugh expire after it told the city it could no longer afford to provide curbside recycling. The price of recycling has remained the same for 15 years at $1.70 a household.
Shawnee decided to name a task force to negotiate the new politics of recycling and, like many other cities, rethink its go-green efforts.
The task force is to present its recommendations April 13. Until then, Deffenbaugh has agreed to keep collecting and not increase its prices.
Deffenbaugh said it is losing money now on recycling.
“The tons are still moving,” said Mike Clagett, a Deffenbaugh spokesman. “We are just not getting the value for the tons that we once did.”
Deffenbaugh is not being hurt as badly as some other recycling companies across the country, which have been forced to stockpile materials they cannot sell or not accept them anymore. Deffenbaugh has developed excellent business relations with its recycling dealers on the West Coast, said spokesman Tom Coffman.
Most of Deffenbaugh’s materials were shipped to China until the market collapsed.
Batliner Paper Co., which has The Kansas City Star’s recycling contract, said some materials are still moving in the markets, but others, such as cardboard, are starting to pile up.