1 year later: Western Washtenaw Recycling Authority’s single stream

(Chelsea Update would like to thank Frank Hammer, chairman of the Western Washtenaw Recycling Authority Board, for the information in this column.)

In 1990, reducing the landfill foot print was a concern of local communities in Western Washtenaw County.

Recycling was one way to accomplish that goal, and several municipalities on the west side of the county formed an authority tasked with providing recycling within those communities. A lot of hard work and trips the Lansing earned Western Washtenaw Recycling Authority a $300,000 grant to start the recycling program.

Since WWRA’s inception in 1991, the facility has grown from 5,000 square feet to 15,000 square feet with $5 million dollars in assets.

The original system was set up as a sorting, dual-stream process requiring a lot of work from residents. However, with the assistance from Washtenaw County with a bond in 2012, WWRA switched over to the new single stream recycling program that requires no sorting.

So the question one might be asking is whether this switch and the bond expense has been successful?

To answer that question, remember that WWRA started out recycling about 100 tons of material a month, and for the last 7- to 9-years, it has been recycling about 300 tons per month.  Today, WWRA is recycling 600 tons a month.

In the City of Chelsea, WWRA went from recycling for 800 households to more than 1,800 households with the new single stream process.

Another way to look at this success is to consider that WWRA is keeping about 45,000 cubic yards out of the landfill each year. This points to outstanding performance by the residents of the WWRA community.

The fact that the WWRA recycling rate is more than double that of the rest of Michigan is just frosting on the cake.

However, there is one issue: Disposal companies have come into our county competing against each other and offering free curbside recycling to township residents if they sign up for their refuse program. And, these companies are taking the recyclables outside of Washtenaw County for processing.

WWRA estimates that it is losing between $6,000 and $9,000 of material revenue per month. WWRA realizes that for township residents, it is convenient to just put the recycling outside rather than take it to a bin site.

However, keep in mind that with the winter tax bill there is an operational assessment for WWRA – an assessment we were hoping to reduce with the increased revenue from the recycling volume. That’s not happening at the moment because of these monetary losses.  Additionally, there are as many as six refuse companies going down the same streets on any given day causing the roads to deteriorate much faster than they should. Eventually, this will wind up costing homeowner’s associations, townships and the county to fix these roads.

Township officials and WWRA board members held a joint meeting last week to evaluate the best approach to resolve these issues.

We expect to have several more meetings in the future.

WWRA and its board of directors would like to thank all of the residents who support our program.

What we do today will affect the future of our communities in years to come, and WWRA’s mission and goal is to protect the environment and to reduce the carbon footprint for future generations.