SEATTLE (Recycling Monster): For the first time since 2014, waste haulers in Summit County may soon be able to accept glass in single-stream recycling. County staff recommended that the Summit Board of County Commissioners implement the change. Single-stream recycling, which allows residents to put multiple types of recyclable materials in the same bin, started in Summit County in 2011. At the time, it included glass, but according to Bill Schenk, the assistant director of the Summit County Resource Allocation Park, the glass was shattering during collection and contaminating and devaluing the other recyclable materials.

The county’s material recovery facility did not have the capacity to process recyclable materials, so it would instead bale the materials into cubes and send them to a processing facility on the Front Range. The baling would compress materials, including glass shards, together. “Those small glass shards were sticking to the paper and the containers of the single-stream, and that was devaluing that material,” Schenk said.

In 2014, after conversations with waste haulers, the county stopped allowing glass in single-stream recycling. Instead, it now has 12 locations where people can drop off mixed glass for recycling and four locations where people can separate their clear and colored glass to recycle it.

Courtesy: www.wasteadvantagemag.com