Pensacola to end curbside recycling on Oct. 1, add second trash pick-up day
Pensacola will end mandatory curbside recycling on Oct. 1, Mayor D.C. Reeves announced Tuesday at his press conference.
The move comes after the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority notified the city it was doubling fees to bring recycling to its Material Recycling Facility as well as adding fees if loads are too contained with trash. Most of the city's recycling loads are averaging around 50% contamination, according to ECUA.
Reeves said the city would look for ways to provide recycling options for people who want them. Meanwhile, the city will return to a twice-a-week trash pick-up.
"As we move away from the mandatory recycling, we're going to up-service garbage pickup service to twice a week," Reeves said. "It's something that we had many years ago. Anybody that has two or three kids or a large family run around knows the value in being able to have either Monday, Thursday or Tuesday, Friday pick-up."
Reeves said the twice-a-week pick-up will not change the cost the city charges for garbage pick-up, though there may be a small increase coming next year anyway because of cost increases.
"That's just the state of labor and the economy," Reeves said. "We're talking about under $1 a month. We're still refining what that number might be."
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The decision to end curbside recycling avoids a much larger rate increase that would've taken place because of the increase in ECUA fees.
Reeves said it made no sense to raise fees for all city residents and pay more when 50% of the recycling collected was contaminated with trash and would end up in the landfill anyway.
"What we're seeing in fact and in data is that (the recycling can) is being used as a second garbage can in the city," Reeves said. "Let's find a better way to help our environment, to help our community."
ECUA has had its own problems with the recycling facility, with three major shutdowns in two years. The recycling facility was shut down for much of May as the utility faced a staffing shortage and reopened on June 12.
Local governments like Pensacola, Fort Walton Beach, Okaloosa County, Fairhope, Alabama, and Mobile, Alabama, take recycling to ECUA's recycling facility.
The growing problem of contamination in recycling collected and falling commodity prices has caused ECUA to need to raise the prices it charges other municipalities, ECUA Executive Director Bruce Woody told the News Journal earlier this month.
Reeves said the annual citizen survey coming out soon would include a question on whether residents would be willing to pay extra on their sanitation bill for curbside recycling. If there are enough positive answers from the more than 21,000 sanitation customers, Reeves said the city might look into providing that as a service or negotiate a contract with ECUA to provide the service.
"A curbside program is going to take some critical mass," Reeve said. "It can't only be 200 or 300 accounts."
No final decisions have been made on what will replace the recycling program, but the current program will end on Oct. 1.
Reeves said the city wants to find a way for people who want to recycle to be able to recycle instead of having all of it go to a landfill.
"Let us do a better job of making sure that when you take that time and effort and energy into recycling, it's getting where you hope it goes because I can't promise you that right now," Reeves said. "I can't promise you that if you're putting something correctly in the recycling can, that the outcome that you're expecting when it leaves your curb is taking place. So that's what we're focused on."
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola will end curbside recycling in October add second trash day
