County's recycling dips, but only a bit

Baker County residents and businesses recycled a bit more than 7.5 million pounds of cardboard, paper, yard debris and other stuff in 2010.

Which is quite a bit.

And the county’s second-highest yearly total ever.

But it’s wasn’t as much as the year before.

The county set a record in 2009 by recycling 8.1 million pounds of material, according to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).

The drop in 2010, which amounts to 6.7 percent, had no obvious cause, said David Henry, president of Baker Sanitary Service, which operates the county’s only recycling center.

In fact the DEQ numbers, which were released last week, surprised Henry.

By Baker Sanitary’s calculations, the company’s customers recycled about 178,000 pounds more material than DEQ allotted to the entire county.

Baker Sanitary’s recycling bins, at 12th and Campbell streets, are open 24 hours a day.

Henry said use of the bins has been relatively steady over the past few years.

The explanation for the decline in 2010 could lie elsewhere.

Baker Sanitary takes in more than half the county’s recyclables, so less recycling at other locations — businesses, generally — also affect the county’s total.

State confidentiality laws preclude DEQ from releasing the names of other firms whose recycling statistics the agency included in its 2010 total for Baker County.

Henry said he plans to investigate the apparent discrepancy between Baker Sanitary’s figures and DEQ’s.

In any case, the more statistically significant difference between 2010 and 2009 is the percentage of trash recycled in the county, not the total.

That percentage dipped from 28.3 percent in 2009 to 23.7 percent in 2010.

That change, though, is easy to explain, Henry said.

What happened, he said, is a train derailed in 2010.

Freight cars carrying soda ash spilled their loads, and because Baker Sanitary’s landfill near Sutton Creek, about five miles southeast of Baker City, was the closest, the soda ash, which can’t be recycled, was hauled there, Henry said.

The ash weighed about 2,500 tons — nearly 18 percent of the total material taken to the landfill in 2010, Henry said.

Largely as a result of the ash disposal, the county’s total trash tonnage increased from 15.5 tons in 2009 to 17.5 tons in 2010.

DEQ calculates each county’s recycling rate with simple math. First, add the weight of the material recycled to the weight of the material disposed of at the landfill.

This sum is how much trash the county generated.

Then divide the amount recycled by the total generated to get the percentage of material recycled.

Because the train derailment boosted the county’s trash total, the recycling rate declined by a much larger percentage — 16.2 percent — than did the amount of material actually recycled — the aforementioned 6.7 percent.

Had the train not derailed, the recycling rate would have been about 27.2 percent, a drop of 3.8 percent from 2009.

Henry said the recycling topic he hears about most often from customers is curbside collection — specifically, that people would appreciate the convenience.

Baker City is one of just three Oregon cities with more than 5,000 residents in which curbside recycling is not available.

Hermiston and Umatilla, both in Umatilla County, are the others.

Pendleton, also in Umatilla County, offers curbside recycling for commercial customers but not for residential, said Mary Lou Perry, a solid waste specialist for DEQ in Portland.

DEQ has allowed those three cities to forego full curbside recycling because Umatilla County has consistently met its recycling target of 20 percent set by the Oregon Legislature several years ago, Perry said.

Baker County’s target is 25 percent, a rate it has been near, and in some years has exceeded.

“Right now there is no big push for (requiring) curbside recycling in Baker City,” Perry said.

Henry said that although he understands that offering curbside pickup in Baker City would simplify recycling for residents, the service would also require the company to charge more.

He said Baker Sanitary hasn’t recently studied the matter, but several years ago the company estimated that instituting curbside recycling would add $3 to $4 per month to customers’ bills.

That could be a tough sell given the sluggish economy and that Baker Sanitary hasn’t raised its rates since 2006, when the monthly charge for residential customers increased from $13 to $16.

Henry pointed out that the company can’t unilaterally decide to raise its rates by more than 5 percent in any single year. Baker Sanitary’s franchise agreement with Baker City gives the City Council the authority to approve or reject larger rate hikes requested by the company.

A complicating factor, he said, is the unpredictable nature of prices for recycled material.

Baker Sanitary bundles the material it collects at its recycling center and sells it on the wholesale market.

At times, Henry said, the prices for certain materials are high enough to offset the increased cost of adding curbside collection.

But at other times — and wholesale prices can change fast — even a $3 to $4 boost in monthly rates wouldn’t cover the added cost.

“It’s hard to peg our rates right in the middle,” Henry said.

Nonetheless, he said he would like to offer curbside collection eventually.

“I think it’s definitely feasible, and obviously it would be nice from a convenience standpoint,” he said.