Connecticut cities and towns will face hundreds of thousands of dollars in unexpected costs for curbside recycling this year.
A report from the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities released on Monday finds that China’s refusal to accept contaminated recycled materials, like greasy pizza boxes, has caused the market for American recycling to collapse.
“In Bridgeport, recycling used to produce $130,000 profit. Now the city is going to have to pay nearly $400,000. So it’s really flipped from bringing money in so property taxes don’t have to increase as much, to a big new expense for towns,” said CCM Director of Communications Kevin Maloney.
Similarly, the town of Fairfield used to earn $50,000 a year selling recycling but will soon have to pay more than $500,000 to dispose of it.
Maloney urges local municipalities to cut down on waste that ends up in recycling and look for new markets to sell recycled materials so they can break even on the curbside collection expenses.
“Perhaps looking at new restrictions on packaging material and sizing, continuing to try to get mandatory education to citizens about continuing to recycle. The key thing at this point is going to be searching for new markets, local markets and elsewhere, for recyclables.”