CHENEY, Wash. — On Sept. 1, the city of Cheney stopped recycling glass at its recycling centers.
“It really was starting to impact our operation,” said Mark Schuller, Cheney’s city administrator.
Schuller said that without getting rid of the glass recycling, the city would have had to start increasing its rates for waste pickup.
“Without some kind of rate increase, it was just going to be very difficult for us to continue to absorb the increase in cost of transporting glass,” Schuller said.
He said this isn’t necessarily a permanent decision, but that it is a solution until the city decides on other options. Cheney isn’t the first city in Spokane County to stop recycling glass. Schuller said Medical Lake also stopped their glass recycling a couple of years ago.
Schuller said rising expenses is what prompted Cheney to make its decision.
Previously, if you wanted to recycle your glass waste in Cheney, you would drop it off at a recycling center. That center would then use a process called single-stream sorting to separate it from other recyclable materials like cardboard and aluminum. The glass would then go to businesses or other locations that could reuse it.
But Schuller said that over the years, many of those places slowly stopped using the glass.
“The market for recycled glass…it needs to be pure,” Schuller said. “But with a single source, you don’t necessarily get to separate out the good glass from the not so good glass, so when it all co-mingles together, you don’t get as pure a product, and so it’s less marketable.”
He said the unused glass often ends up in a landfill.
Those that live in Cheney and still want to recycle glass, can take it to the Waste to Energy Plant or directly to some businesses.