Princeton Mayor Liz Lempert said on July 9 that Mercer County has proposed a new recycling contract that calls for the municipality to pay “dramatically” more for residential recycling pickup, as the impact of trade policy in Asia is being felt locally.
The current five-year-deal Princeton has with the Mercer County Improvement Authority expires at the end of December. Lempert said that in 2018, the town is paying $204,852 to the county, which has a contract with a hauler to collect materials to be recycled.
The proposed new agreement, reflecting changes in the global market for recyclables, calls for a 40-percent increase, Lempert said. For example, the amount Princeton pays would grow to $287,580 in 2019 and reach $318,909 by 2023, she said during a press conference.
Lempert stopped short of saying the town would reject the county’s offer.
“I think it’s a wakeup call and we need to look into it,” she said.
Princeton is feeling the impact of the Chinese government changing the policy of that Asian country, which had imported large amounts of recyclable materials from the United States and elsewhere and processed them.
In January, China began banning imports of “scrap plastics” and “unsorted mixed paper from all sources,” according to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, a trade group headquartered in Washington, D.C.
China, taking the step for environmental reasons, said it also would prohibit “all plastics, small electric motors and insulated wire by the end of 2018 and stainless steel and other metallic scrap by the end of 2019,” the organization said on its website.
“Essentially, they are saying it’s a pass-through cost,” Lempert said of the county. “It’s that because China has closed its markets, the value of the recyclable materials has gone down and it’s hard for (the county) to find a place for them.”
“The current publicly bid price, sealed bid pricing, not negotiable, increased by more than 40 percent, which is consistent with observations statewide,” Mercer County spokeswoman Julie Willmot said via email on July 10. “The increase is a result of the now negative value of the recyclable material being collected.
“For example, the market conditions during the bidding of the existing shared service agreement had the average single stream rate at a (plus) $25 per ton of material collected. However, the current market for single stream material is now at (minus) $50 per ton collected. As a result, recycling programs nationally are experiencing cost increases until the market returns to a positive direction,” Willmot said.
Princeton is one of nine towns in Mercer County that participates in the arrangement with the county.
“We are optimistic the market will eventually move back in a positive direction and will continue to monitor conditions on a quarterly basis and look to re-bid should conditions improve,” Willmot said.
As for what Princeton does next, Lempert raised the prospect of entering into a shorter deal with the county.
Recycling is mandatory in New Jersey, although some counties are more expansive in what has to be recycled. For instance, Cumberland County requires businesses to recycle food waste, according to the state.
“You have to recycle and it’s part of the county plan,” municipal director of infrastructure and operations Robert Hough said on July 9. “The problem is the market for recycling is poor right now.”
In terms of disposal, Lempert said single-stream recycling, while intended to be more cost-effective by having fewer pickups with all recyclable materials placed in one container, has caused issues. She said glass breaks down into shards that are difficult to remove from newspaper.
“It was a great theoretical idea to have a single bin, but I think that might be something we want to look at,” Lempert said. “If we go back to asking residents to separate (recyclables), does that lower our costs at all, or once you make the move to a single stream, is it too hard to get people to go back to separating? These are some of the issues we’re going to be grappling with.”
Municipal officials have urged residents to do their part to keep their recycling “clean” by making sure they keep plastic bags out of their container.