Mesa recycling may get back on track next year

Jun. 8—The title of Mesa's recycling program promises action: "Mesa Recycles."

But for the past two-and-a-half years, it might have been more accurate to put the name in the form of a question:

"Mesa Recycles?"

Disruptions to the city's program have left some residents wondering how much waste is actually being diverted from the landfill.

City officials admit the program has been buffeted by problems in recent years, and not all blue barrel material can be recycled currently.

Mesa's total reliance on outside vendors to recycle has given the city limited ability to respond to setbacks, which hit the city's program in rapid succession near the start of 2020.

Environmental Management and Sustainability Director Scott Bouchie told Mesa City Council earlier this year that 2023 might finally be the dawn of better days for his department's recycling program.

Republic Services has announced that it will begin rebuilding its Materials Recovery Facility at the Salt River Landfill, which used to be Mesa's top recycler before the facility was destroyed in a fire in 2019.

Republic told the Tribune that construction was estimated for completion in late 2022 or early 2023.

Bouchie also told City Council that the city will partner with Gilbert to issue a joint request for proposals for recycling vendors in January of 2023, possibly increasing the number of facilities that will accept Mesa's recyclable materials.

Currently, Mesa is totally reliant on one small recycler that caps the amount it will accept from the city, which limits how much Mesa can divert from the landfill.

Longer term, Mesa is considering investing in recycling infrastructure of its own, so it's less dependent on outside entities to recycle.

Despite the city's lack of investment in recycling infrastructure to date, recycling is an important issue for Mesa residents.

In a study last fall to gauge residents' priorities for the Climate Action Plan, recycling received solid ratings, and half a dozen respondents used an online forum to vent frustration with the city's current recycling program.

"The city should improve the current recycling program," one poster wrote. "Almost nothing is accepted anymore."

In 2019, before disaster struck, Mesa reported diverting about 20% of its garbage from landfills for recycling.

Then, at the end of 2019 and the start of 2020, a series of events brought chaos to the program, resulting in a total stoppage of recycling collection for much of 2020, before a restart at limited capacity in 2021 and into the present.

Today, Mesa's recycling diversion bounces between 5% and 9% of its collected waste per month, less than half of what it reported three years ago.

The recycling woes started in October 2019, when a fire destroyed Republic Services' regional recycling facility at the Salt River Landfill.

After that disaster, another recycling vendor, Waste Management, canceled its contract with the city, demanding more favorable rates and terms to continue accepting material. Bouchie balked at the price increases, so Mesa was down to one small vendor, United Fibers.

Delivering recycling to even that one vendor became impossible when the pandemic surged the amount of household waste the city had to deal with, requiring the city to focus its resources in waste collection.

Eventually, the city was able to resume recycling pickup, but United Fibers capped the total annual amount Mesa could bring to the facility. Once Mesa hits its limits, overflow blue barrel material goes to the landfill.

Bouchie told the Tribune in April that the city tries to send the cleanest, least contaminated recycling it collects to the United Fibers, since contamination with non-recyclable materials can render materials unusable, resulting in them being sent to the landfill.

He also said that Mesa spreads out its recycling allotment from United Fibers throughout the year, so it won't have to stop recycling completely part way through the year.

Mesa's recycling troubles can be blamed on bad luck, but its chronic lack of investment in recycling infrastructure has left the city vulnerable to turbulence in the local and global recycling market.

Without a place to sort or store recyclables of its own, the city doesn't have much leverage with recycling service providers.

"We don't own any post-collection facilities," Bouchie told the Council in 2020. "We pick up material from our customers ... and then we bring it to somebody else. We don't own transfer stations, we don't own a landfill, we don't own any recycling facilities, so we're dependent upon other entities in order for us to be able to take care of materials that we pick up and transport."

This state of affairs might finally change in 2023, too.

A consultant for the city recently completed a feasibility study for building a city-owned materials recovery facility.

City Manager Chris Brady told the council that it wouldn't be cost effective for Mesa to build its own MRF, but it might make sense for Mesa to partner with another city on a regional MRF.

Mesa already has a potential site in mind, a piece of city-owned land

near Pecos and Sossaman Roads in southeast Mesa.

"It wouldn't take much to imagine partnering with communities in that area," Brady said. "I've already spoken with the city managers in Gilbert and Chandler about the possibility — would they be open to a presentation from us about developing maybe a cooperative agreement for a MRF — and they're definitely open to that."