Local officials are optimistic that by the first of the year, recycling containers should return to Lawrence public schools.

The large recycling bins that sat in the parking lots of most public schools have been gone since at least September, when Deffenbaugh Industries removed the bins. The Kansas City-based company had been providing the bins to the school district, but removed them as the company exited the market when the city began operating a citywide curbside recycling program in October.

At the time, city officials said they hoped to provide recycling bins to the public schools when the curbside service began for homes in mid-October. That didn’t happen, but city officials on Monday said they now are ready to bring the necessary containers to the schools once the school district officials tell them how many containers they need.

“We’re very excited to start partnering with the schools,” said Kathy Richardson, solid waste division manager.

Richardson said the city already has delivered containers to two private schools — St. John Catholic School and Raintree Montessori.

Lawrence Superintendent Rick Doll said he expected the Lawrence school board soon will take up the issue to get a deal formalized with the city. He said the school board will need to take some action because the city will charge for the service. The district’s current budget does not have money set aside for a recycling service, but he was optimistic the district would be able to find the funding. A dollar estimate for the needed funding wasn’t immediately available Monday evening.

“My sense is that this is a high priority for the board,” Doll said at a joint city/county/school district meeting where the topic was discussed on Monday.

Currently, the school district is able to recycle aluminum cans and cardboard, but it has had to curtail or eliminate programs to recycle plastics, paper and other such material.

City officials said they don’t feel they can provide the service for free to the school district, in part because the recycling program is expensive to operate. The city pays about $15 more per ton to process recyclable materials than they do to dump garbage in the landfill, although some of the recycling costs can be offset through the sale of the recycled materials.

One change parents of school children may notice is that the new recycling bins likely will not be easily accessible for parents to drop off material. In the past, several parents had used the school bins to drop off recycling material. City officials said the new bins likely will be in enclosed areas that won’t be easily accessible to the public. That will help hold down the cost the city must charge to the school district, officials said.

Douglas County officials said they are aware that the loss of the school sites may make it more difficult for some rural residents to recycle. Douglas County Administrator Craig Weinaug said Hamm Inc., the company that operates the city’s recycling processing facility, has offered to set up recycling bins at various locations throughout the county. Weinaug said the county has an interest in that, but must find locations that are somewhat supervised in order to prevent large-scale dumping of non-recyclable materials.