Like any other market, the market for recyclable commodities has crashed in recent months. This has caused worry in many cities about how to continue with recycling programs, with prices for products like newsprint and cardboard reaching all-time lows.
Thanks to a recent contract with a recycling company, Emporia can rest easy about it’s recycling program.
The city of Emporia has reached an agreement with Midland Davis Corporation to take the city’s recycling. The contract, signed Dec. 22, is a one-year agreement.
The recycling program here did not reach a crisis point as it has in other cities. But for a while, it was close.
“There were a couple of weeks there where no one would even take our cardboard or magazines or anything,” said Solid Waste Department assistant Rick Eisenhower. “It’s because China quit importing, basically.”
While 2007 was a banner year for recyclables, the market now is scary.
“Last year, we collected $246,532 for recyclables,” Eisenhower said. “So far this year, it’s close to $225,000. We thought we were going to surpass last year, but since the markets fell out, it’s going to be close. We won’t know until the end of January, when all the billing’s in.”
The city collected 2,397 tons of recyclables in 2007. This year it will be close to that number, but the money collected won’t be close.
The market price for cardboard in September was $115 per ton. That price has dropped to around $20 a ton. Mixed waste paper was $85 per ton in September; now it is almost worthless.
It’s gotten to the point where cities are having trouble finding buyers. For a city that takes in 45 tons of newspaper and 1,328 tons of cardboard per year, that can be a frightening situation.
“We were having some difficulty because the markets just fell out,” Eisenhower said. “It got to a point where we couldn’t even move it. Nobody wanted it, even for free. No one had room.”
The city started contacting recyclers, and Midland Davis was one of a couple of companies to reply. Emporia and Midland Davis worked out an agreement for the company to take newsprint and magazines from the city. “The contract is just for a couple of commodities, so that means we can probably go other places with some of our other commodities, like cardboard and plastics,” Eisenhower said.
“They take the recyclables based on the commodity price,” he said. “They go up and down, so it’s a flexible arrangement.”