Recycling - Where to Go?

For now, residents of Portal, Paradise and Whitetail can drop off recyclables at points removed - Willcox, Douglas, and Tucson. By the end of the year (and I hope sooner), there will be facilities for collecting recycables at all the urban and rural transfer stations in Cochise County. (See Department of Solid Waste for the locations of all the 14 transfer stations. Portal/Paradise is listed as a rural transfer station but, as you know, a roll-off container for collecting solid waste does not stay there.) In the meantime you can leave your plastics, paper, cans, aluminum, cardboard, and scrap metal at:

FRV Metals and Recycling - 789 N. Douglas Ave., Douglas (On the west side of town near Pirtleville) 364 3671. Accepts metal, cardboard, paper, aluminum, cans.

Express Recycling - 700 E. Maley St., Willcox (Near VTC offices, at the Twin Lakes turnoff) 384 4196. Accepts plastic, metal, cardboard, and aluminum.

City of Willcox accepts paper and cardboard in dumpsters on Railroad Avenue.

Further afield, there are 15 locations in Tucson that accept recyclables (Paper, plastic, cardboard, metal, aluminum, and glass); see Tucson Clean and Beautful for the locations of these dropoff sites. (The home page for Tucson Clean and Beautiful has some useful information too.)
There is no facility in Cochise County that I am aware of that accepts glass for recycling. (More on that next week.)

Recycling Update

Last year Cochise County commissioned R. W. Beck, Inc., to assess the current state of the County's solid waste operations and assess the economics of undertaking recycling across the County. Beck submitted an interim report on May 19 and met with members of the Recycling Committee and County officials on June 9. They will make a final presentation to the Rate Review Board and to the Board of Supervisors on August 12.

The report (Recycling Feasibility Study) is long (136 pages) and unnecessarily verbose in places. However, it is a comprehensive review of the current state of solid waste operations in Cochise County and an in-depth analysis of the economics of recycling in the County. Beck studied a number of recycling scenarios, including (a) gathering recycling materials, compacting them, and hauling to Tucson, and (b) collecting recyclables and sorting and compacting in an unused Material Recycling Facility (MRF) at Huachuca City. The economics of hauling to an existing MRF in Tucson are dubious at best and the Recycling Committee recommended on July 7 that the County start negotiations with Huachuca City to renovate and use the MRF there.

A County-wide recycling operation will depend on the cities (Benson, Bisbee, Douglas, Sierra Vista, and Willcox) embracing recycling within their jurisdiction. Some cities all already starting this (See the Sierra Vista Herald for Sunday July 6); Sierra Vista has a curb side program and Bisbee is getting into the act too. In subsequent posts, I will discuss how the recycling program will (probably) be implemented and what options there will be for rural residents.

If you're interested in seeing a copy of Beck's report (136 page PDF - 4.4 MB) or their June 9 presentation (38 page PDF - 440KB), let me know (hedleybond@earthlink.net) and I'll send you a (digital) copy.