Contaminated recycling: Noncompliance in Lawrence system creating trash

A worker sorts through a large heap of recycling materials for pieces of trash and other larger recycling items, such as a plastic bucket that need to be removed, before being scooped up with a loader and dumped into a complex sorting machine on Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016 at the Hamm's Recycling Facility, 26195 Linwood Road.

A half-dozen sorters — human, not robotic — plucked garbage Wednesday from among the recyclables moving along a conveyor belt inside the Hamm Material Recovery Facility, where Lawrence’s recycling goes to be separated, smashed and shipped.

The trash — a mix of Styrofoam, small pill containers, plastic bags and other materials the facility can’t recycle — was tossed down chutes and landed in heaps that would eventually be taken to the Hamm landfill.

“We’re looking for plastic bags. We’re looking for trash, polystyrene, all linear things like pencils, pens,” said Charlie Sedlock, a division manager for Hamm. “And oddball things, like windshield wipers. You’ll see he just threw down some yellow strapping tape.”

The heaps of garbage were among the other, separated mounds of newspaper, plastic bottles and cans, though Sedlock said the trash piles took much longer to accumulate than the recyclables. After about a week or two, the trash is taken to the landfill.

The scene highlighted a hiccup in the city’s year-old, single-stream recycling program: people aren’t always complying with what goes into it. And that means — especially at places like apartment complexes and downtown — the contents of entire recycling bins are sometimes being taken to the landfill because of the actions of a few.

The noncompliance also causes items that could be recycled elsewhere, such as plastic bags, to not be.

“You never know whether they’re trying to do the right thing and they don’t realize it, or they don’t care,” said facility operator Tom Boxberger.

“I call them ‘wish-cyclers,'” Sedlock said of people throwing items in, hoping the facility can do something with them.

Both Sedlock and Kathy Richardson, the city’s solid waste division manager, said that overall, Lawrence is doing a good job with recycling. But it takes constant education and communications.

“Most Lawrence residents are trying,” Richardson said.

Problem items

Charlie Sedlock, a division manager with Hamm, said items the Material Recovery Facility can’t accept, but often sees, includes:

• Pens and pencils

• Garden hoses

• Rope and wire

• Straws

• Bottle caps

• Styrofoam

• Pill containers

• EpiPens or insulin syringes

• Yard waste

• Plastic-coated paper cups, such as some to-go cups

• Plastic bags

Apartment buildings

When residents of single-family homes put the wrong things in their recycling carts, city workers can pick the items out, or, if it’s too contaminated, leave the cart with a tag explaining why it wasn’t taken. If it happens repeatedly, someone will contact the resident and explain which items are unacceptable.

Richardson said a lot of the issues get resolved that way. But the process becomes more complicated with apartment complexes.

“At apartment complexes, it’s that much more difficult to catch,” Richardson said. “They might have 32 units, or maybe they have hundreds and hundreds of units. It becomes hard for us to communicate.”

City workers will still attempt to pick out the unacceptable items from the large recycling dumpsters at apartment complexes. When there’s too much contamination, the city notifies the property manager.

Richardson said “99 percent” of the time, the property manager has someone take the garbage out of the recycling dumpster, and the city comes back to take the recyclable items to the recovery facility.

In other, more rare, instances, Richardson said, the property manager has the city take the bin as trash. When that happens, the property manager gets billed for the trash pickup.

Richardson said the situation is “upsetting” to tenants who are complying.

“They want to recycle and do the right thing, and then they’re seeing that it goes to trash,” she said.

A few properties have opted to remove the recycling dumpsters because of the constant contamination, Richardson said. That’s happened “less than a handful” of times.

Plastic bags

Of the items people are putting in their carts, but shouldn’t be, the most common was plastic grocery and trash bags, Sedlock said.

Though plastic bags are recyclable, the city’s material recovery facility can’t handle them. The bags wrap around parts of the equipment, and a worker has to go into it to cut them out.

“It changes the whole dynamic of how that machine works,” Sedlock said. “If it wraps enough, it will shut down the whole machine, and then the whole system.”

A bin full of trash begins to pile up on Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016 at the Hamm's Recycling Facility, 26195 Linwood Road.

On Wednesday, one of the mounds of garbage inside the recovery facility mostly contained plastic bags. Sedlock said he’d like to eventually get the equipment and staff necessary to recycle the bags that unwittingly get sent into the system.

“We would like to work with the city in the future — not to tell everybody to recycle the bags — but the bags that we get, we would love to set up a small vacuum system that can handle that small amount of bags and actually recycle them,” Sedlock said.

The ability to recycle the plastic bags would take an additional employee, a vacuum system and another machine to bail the bags worth at least “a couple hundred thousand dollars,” Sedlock said. The addition would cause an increase in what Lawrence pays Hamm for its services.

In November, a city board took up a proposal that would have attempted to reduce the amount of plastic bags going to the landfill.

Lawrence’s Sustainability Advisory Board had decided to work with three environmental groups on their proposal to restrict or limit single-use plastic bags in the city. Eileen Horn, coordinator of the sustainability board, said this week the issue was on hold.

The board member who had volunteered to work with the groups resigned from the board, Horn said, and “none of the board members felt that passionate about the topic.”

According to a city directory, plastic shopping bags can be taken to recycling bins at Checkers, the four Dillon’s locations, both Hy-Vee and Wal-Mart locations and Target.

Downtown bins contaminated

On Wednesday, Sedlock picked up a bucket near the conveyor belt that contained EpiPens and insulin syringes. Each month, after enough are collected, Hamm sends them out as medical waste, he said.

Other items the system can’t handle, but sees a lot of, include pens, pencils, bottle caps, garden hoses, rope, wire and yard waste.

Straws, one of “the worst things,” can slip through the equipment and contaminate the other recycling.

“We hate straws with a passion,” Sedlock said.

Richardson said the city has had some problems with straws and to-go cups and containers getting placed in the recycling bins downtown. Some of the items, such as clear plastic cups, are recyclable, but most aren’t.

The blue downtown bins, which came about as a pilot project called “Recycle on the Go,” are located along Massachusetts Streets at every corner from Seventh to 11th streets.

So far, city workers have had to take the items from the bins and sort through them before sending the acceptable stuff to Hamm.

“We actually will collect them and it goes to one of our city properties where we can sort through as best as possible,” Richardson said. “Sometimes it’s so contaminated — we find dirty diapers, other materials — it isn’t even acceptable to recycle.”

The city is monitoring how those bins are being used before expanding the program to include bins in other downtown locations and in city parks.

Mixing items

The way in which people recycle has also become an issue.

Sedlock warned against crushing cans because the recycling system may mix them in with cardboard.

He also said to keep all items loose. When items are put inside of others, they’re crushed together and become trash, he said.

“They think it’s this cool little gift, but if there’s something like, a steel can inside a bottle inside a Folgers can, there’s not a market for that,” Sedlock said. “There’s a market for the can, there’s a market for the steel, there’s a market for the bottle. Altogether, it’s trash.”