The Columbia City Council on Monday will receive a long-anticipated recycling report that calls for significant short-term and long-term changes.
Highlights of the report are laid out in a staff memo attached to the meeting agenda.
According to the memo, city staff favors automated curbside recycling collection as the fastest way to restore that service. Automated collection would require purchasing additional roll carts for recycling at an estimated cost of $2.2 million, and leasing the necessary trucks would cost $800,000 annually.
Automating curbside collection will improve recruitment and retention of waste management staff, according to the memo.
As previously reported, curbside recycling collection was suspended indefinitely in June because of staffing issues. The council was told at a recent meeting that those issues continue to persist.
The study, conducted by RRT Design & Construction, evaluated the city’s recycling and waste diversion programs and concludes that the city’s Material Recovery Facility (MRF) has reached the end of its useful life.
The study identifies three urgent issues in the recycling program:
- Suspension of curbside recycling collection.
- Contaminated loads from recycling drop-off centers.
- Operational issues at the city’s material recovery facility.
To address these issues in the short term (within six months) and restore curbside recyclables collection, the study recommends a temporary suspension of local recyclables processing, immediately closing three drop-off sites, adding glass-only bins and procuring computerized routing services.
Two of the three sites recommended to be closed are on MU’s campus: one near Bluford Hall along Kentucky Boulevard and one near the East Campus Plant Growth Facility. The third site is downtown at the south side of the Tenth and Cherry Parking Garage.
The remaining recycling drop-off sites are recommended to be consolidated, staffed, gated and only open during daylight hours.
The study also recommends adding glass-only purple bins to these remaining drop-off sites, which would reduce the number of tons to be transferred and prepare customers for a curbside recycling collection service that does not include glass.
Four solutions were presented to replace the city’s Material Recovery Facility:
- Ceasing local operations permanently and implementing transfer to an out-of-town facility (Cost estimate not given).
- Retrofit or upgrade the existing facility (Estimated cost of $9 million with no ability to expand operations).
- Construct a new facility on the current site (Estimated cost of $17 million with temporary transfer of operations to another site).
- Construct a new facility at the Columbia Sanitary Landfill property (Estimated cost of $28 million but continuing operations at the existing site during construction).
Evaluation of collection operations such as trucks, routing and staffing was not part of the study, since the report described recycling collection as “in a state of flux.”
