Washington waste center no longer recycling glass

WASHINGTON — The recycling center operated by WEMIGA has stopped recycling glass, although the company still is accepting the product, and plans to resume eventually.

WEMIGA Waste Management Owner Lynn Whaley said there just wasn’t a place to sell recycled glass anymore, thanks to market shifts in the last several years.

“I want to keep that door open, in case we do get a market for it,” he said. “The market for glass is just not there. In order to say we’re recycling it … you’d have to take it to Kansas City. But feasibility, it’s just next to impossible for the quantity.”

While it won’t be recycled, the facility still is taking in separated glass waste. Whaley said he hoped a door would eventually open to make it marketable again, a possibility the company plans to be ready for.

“We’re still taking it, and we’re going to keep taking it separately because it’s harder to make people go back to doing it,” he said. “If you say, ‘Oh, just put it in the trash,’ you know how hard it is, if you get a new market for it, to get everybody to go back to doing it. It’s like retraining everybody, you don’t want to do that.”

Outside the county, WEMIGA already doesn’t take glass for curbside collection. Whaley said it was too dangerous.

“If you don’t have a way to handle it completely separately, it breaks and it gets into the other material,” he said. “Then you have a major hazard for people when it goes to the sorting line … you have to take it completely separate.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com