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Greetings!

Great News!  The Flathead County Solid Waste District and the Flathead County Commissioners, acknowledging the value and benefits of the County Recycling Collection Program, have agreed to take a renewed and fresh look at ways to reduce rising program costs so that the recycling collection program can be maintained. They will meet in a joint workshop at 3pm on August 20th at the Earl Bennett Bldg, second floor conference room, to consider other possible strategies to reduce costs and strengthen the program, before taking a final vote on the future of the program. Public comment will be taken at the beginning of the meeting and you can continue up until this meeting to email your support for recycling and ideas for improving the program to [email protected]

A Special Thanks to the almost 200 folks who sent in comments to support keeping the county recycling collection program, and overwhelmingly in support of a possible $2.00 annual fee increase to keep this program!  Your comments and ideas continue to be very important--so keep sending them!

A closer look will be given to how to reduce the number of trips and the associated costs of hauling recycled material from the fifteen current collection sites scattered around the county.  The hope is that a fresh look at this program will result in new solutions from:
  • Finding ways to better compact collected recycled material on site thus reducing the number of pick up trips needed as is currently done at the Columbia Falls container site where a new compactor was installed several years ago, to  
  • Identifying a broader range of local private hauling options, to  
  • Considering the feasibility of using county trucks to alternate trips of picking up garbage at the sites with the pick up of recyclable materials. 
Key to any solution will be the public cooperation in properly sorting materials for recycling. High contamination rates undercut the value of the material collected for recycling. Retaining and making this program work will take the collective creative thinking of all of us to be good stewards and to find local solutions that work. 

We encourage you to call us with your ideas and questions as well.  We will be working to propose new solutions for this workshop and welcome the opportunity to discuss options and ideas you may have. Call us at 756-8993 or email us at [email protected]. Watch for more email updates and ideas from us on this topic over the next few weeks.
 
Sincerely,
 
 
Citizens for a Better Flathead
Note this it the earlier email we sent out prior to the recent FCSW Distrist Meeting. It contains useful background for formulating comments.

Please take a few minutes to comment right now---it really does make a difference!!
Speak up for Recycling!

Your input is very important!

     On July 23rd at 3pm the Flathead County Solid Waste District Board, (at the County Landfill Office located at the landfill), will take public comments before it continues its consideration on the future of the county recycling collection program, which has been in place now for the past fifteen years (Plan to attend or you can click here to send an email now).

Before the board are basically three options: 

1.  Continue with the existing 15 recycling collection sites and ask all county residents to pay an additional $2  per year to cover increasing costs for this service.
 
2.   Reduce the number of recycling collection sites from 15 to 4 to limit rising costs to the county and don't increase the annual fee. (The four sites retained would be the landfill, Columbia Falls, Creston, and Somers.)

3.   Eliminate the county recycling program.

     The Flathead County Solid Waste Board
has indicated at recent meetings that they want to retain the program and have asked the County Commissioners to consider raising the annual fee that all county residents currently pay for landfill and recycling services by $2 annually to retain all the current 15 collection sites. The County Commissioners in informal discussions of this option do not appear to support raising the annual fee. 
 
Citizens for a Better Flathead supports retaining the county recycling collection program and believes that an increased annual fee of $2 for this service is reasonable if coupled with an internal review and study over the next year of ways to further reduce the collection costs for recycling.
 
recycling program has focused almost solely on the cost of the current recycling collection program, and has failed to point out that the cost of the county collection program is off-set by the $ savings of not burying this material in the landfill and by the jobs a growing recycling program creates in the Flathead.

Using cost figures from a recent study the landfill had done on the cost savings of landfill space resulting from not burying recyclables,
most of the costs of the last fifteen years of the recycling program (with the exception of the several years highly impact by the national recession) are off-set by the landfill airspace savings.  The recent bid that the county got for continued collection of recyclables, however, is much higher and would result in a net loss to the district, which is why we recommend the need for a renewed look and study over the next year of ways to reduce these costs.

We concur with the recent Daily Interlake Editorial that stated "We agree, however, with the Solid Waste District board's consensus that the county has an obligation to recycle. Recycling isn't the only service that costs the county money. It costs big bucks to maintain roads, provide adequate law enforcement and so on. In this day and age, recycling has become part of our mindset; it's the right thing to do. If you don't believe us, consider the poll data from www.dailyinterlake.com,
where we asked whether the county should pay the $188,000 a year to maintain current levels of recycling. Fully 72 percent of people responding said the county should pay the increased price, while only 28 percent argued the county should make fiscal prudence its priority and cut the level of recycling."   

     Recycling as an industry nationally is growing and changing. According to a recent Bank of America-Merrill Lynch report, the global waste and recycling business is worth $1 trillion a year. And it could be worth double that by 2020. Studies show that the more convenient it is for people to recycle the more they do. Spokane, Washington is now achieving a 40% recycling rate with the installation of a new Material Recovery Facility.  (Flathead County, for all items recycled by the county and by private industry is at around 24%).

The recent growth in the number of Material Recovery Facilities (MRF) in the northwest is making it easier to recycle. (click here to view a short video on this on how these facilities sort co-mingled or single-stream recycables that are collected).  Investments in these facilities across the northwest is increasing the viability and quantity of materials being collected for recycling. Montana does not currently have any MRF's and so we still face the added transportation costs of getting collected material to these centers or directly to those who buy this recovered material. 

Locally we are seeing businesses like Target offer recycling collection services by filling empty delivery trucks with recyclable materials their customers bring in, or businesses like some of our local grocery stores who are contracting to fill other empty delivery trucks leaving our valley with cardboard and plastic bags that they generate from their grocery business.  We need to spend time over the next year learning from the  ingenious thinking of these local businesses and others in the community to find ways to grow recycling in Flathead County and keep costs down.  

Even if you don't currently recycle, all county residents benefit from those that do---as recycling means we are saving landfill space and we are not burying materials that can be turned into new products. Recycling also result in reduced energy costs and environmental impacts.

Please take time to speak up for recycling!

Remember that recycling:

SAVES NATURAL RESOURCES - The national recycling rate of 30% saves the equivalent of more than 5 million gallons of gasoline, reducing dependence on foreign oil by 114 million barrels.

             

SAVES ENERGY - Paper recycling saves up to 70% of the energy needed to create paper from new timber. Aluminum recycling saves up to 95% of the energy required to make new aluminum from raw ore (equivalent to filling the can 2/3 full of gasoline)

             

SAVES CLEAN AIR & WATER - Recycled paper uses 80% less water and produces 95% less air pollution than virgin paper production.

             

SAVES LANDFILL SPACE - Landfills last longer when recyclables are being diverted.

             

SAVES MONEY CREATES JOBS - Recycling creates far more jobs than do landfills.

 

Citizens for a Better Flathead 
   
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Sample Comments:

I support the county's recycling collection program and I urge you to retain this valuable service. I encourage you to invest time over the next year doing a comprehensive review of how this program can reduce costs and increase recycling opportunities.

 

I would also support a small increase of approximately $2 annually to retain the existing level of recycling services in the county.


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For two decades Citizens for a Better Flathead has worked to foster informed and active citizen participation in the decisions shaping the Flathead's future, and to champion the democratic principles, sustainable solutions, and shared vision necessary to keep the Flathead Special Forever. 
 
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