Paper, cardboard, or plastic? For Gary residents, the question just got more complicated.
Starting next month, the city will suspend curbside recycling, a move city officials say is necessary due to rising costs. Instead, residents will be able to recycle at four monitored drop-off locations throughout the city, where paper, clean plastics, and broken-down cardboard can be deposited during designated hours.
The decision, announced at a January Gary Sanitary District board meeting, has already sparked frustration online. Residents expressed disbelief on Facebook, with one asking, “What was the reason?” Another added, “You’ve got to be kidding.”
In the meeting, the Gary Sanitary District, alongside the city of Gary, voted unanimously to extend its partnership with Republic Services, the city’s waste management contractor. However, the amended contract eliminates curbside recycling pickup, effective Feb. 1, and transitions the city to a drop-off model.
GSD attorney Jewell Harris Jr. explained the increasing costs of sorting and separating clean recycling from contaminated waste forced the city to reassess its options.
“The costs for continued curbside recycling [were] set to increase fairly significantly, so that’s part of this shift,” he told Capital B Gary.
The district is expected to save upward of $400,000 annually by removing the service, as it seeks ways to transition to an in-house waste management system through the city in the future. After running the numbers, Harris said, the costs to continue the curbside program “far outweighed” the benefit to the community, and the city could seek sustainable alternatives like drop off sites, to keep costs as low as possible and avoid raising rates on citizens.
State Rep. Ragen Hatcher, who was recently hired as the executive director of GSD, noted that continuing curbside recycling would have nearly doubled monthly rates for Gary residents, rising from $6 to $11 per household across all 20,000 eligible households, regardless of whether they recycle.
“Yes, it was a financial decision as well, but we want to make sure that those added recyclers, those people who do it on a weekly basis, still have somewhere to take their recycling,” Hatcher said.
Beyond finances, Hatcher said, maintaining some form of recycling is important to the city’s sustainability goals. According to Hatcher, nearly 12%, or approximately 2,300 households, recycle in Gary. Comparatively, other cities, like Chicago, have an average recycling rate around 10%.
“Our city is already dealing with so many pollution issues; recycling is a small thing we can all do, to help the environment and offset some of those environmental woes we place across the city,” Hatcher told Capital B Gary.
The city currently struggles with littering, abandoned tires, and trash-strewn parks. To prevent contamination of the recycling cans seen in previous recycling drop-off locations, Hatcher said that the recycling centers would be monitored during operating hours and locked up at night. The hours of operation have yet to be set.
“We don’t want people to stop recycling; we just want them to take them to recycling locations,” Hatcher said.
The designated drop-off sites are:
- Grand Avenue and Miller Avenue;
- 900 Madison St.;
- 3506 Village Court, northwest parking lot of Gary Public Transportation; and
- 3600 W. Third Ave., at the Gary Sanitary District.
Before using the drop-off locations, residents are urged to ensure their recyclables are clean and food-free. Contaminants, such as leftover food in pizza boxes, can render entire truckloads of recyclables unusable. The Environmental Protection Agency recommends recycling clean, flattened cardboard, foodless plastics, and most types of glass.
When asked about critiques that drop-off sites could diminish accessibility and frequency of recycling, Hatcher responded that it was taken into consideration during the decision.
“One of the big discussions was how do we keep people recycling if they have to bring it into a drop-off location? And what we’re hoping is that people continue to understand or acknowledge the importance of recycling, while at the same time taking that extra step to bring it to a drop-off location,” Hatcher told Capital B Gary.
Added Harris: “I think you can look at it for what it is, and that’s, ‘Hey, we’re changing recycling, and now it’s less convenient,’ and that’s somewhat of a glass-half-empty view of what’s happening. But I think if you look at other communities who have discontinued it altogether, we’ve come up with a solution to keep it going. I think there’s a glass-half-full approach.”