[MissoulaGov] Recycling (was Committee Update 10-28-09)

[Ethel MacDonald]

Amen on the glass frustration!  Personally I think we should return to the
good old days when glass bottles were re-used, not crushed and recycled.
For econ.dev how about if our several fine local breweries got together and,
with gov support, manged to maintain a bottle re-use industry?  Of course,
I'd still have a garage full of wine bottles waiting for my next trip to
Seattle.  Along those lines, too, an interim aid would be some organized
effort to transport bottles to recycling in Montana -- I understand Drummond
actually has the faciiities -- and Butte?  Glad City Council is discussing
this. Thanks.

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 8:43 AM, Jed Taylor <mcc at offthedial.com> wrote:

>  I can't begin to describe how much I hate throwing glass away.  If there
> was ever a material begging to be recycled....
>
> I remember a year or so ago some organization brought in the big
> pulverizing machine that turns glass into pellets.  IIRC, the issue is that
> it's very expensive to rent and transport this machine.  So here's my idea
> regarding glass.
>
> The city puts up an empty warehouse for this project.  It's open once or
> twice a week for a few hours for people to drop off their glass.  Every so
> often, the Machine comes to town and processes all the collected glass.
> This glass gets bagged and sold to whatever industries can use this
> product.  I would guess that once the glass is processed and bagged, the
> transportation costs become reasonable, especially if a large quantity is
> moved by train.
>
>
>
>
> Bob Jaffe wrote:
>
>  Greetings,
>
> This morning I had a work conflict so I missed Public Safety. The only item
> on the agenda was to send an old fire engine off to auction.
>
> In Conservation we had a general discussion on how to improve recycling in
> Missoula.  Pam Walzer did a little presentation on some of the issues we
> face. For the most part it comes down to transportation costs.  We do not
> generate enough volume to make traditional methods of processing recycling
> economical. So we have to ship them off to bigger cities. Often times the
> transportation costs exceed the commodity value. Rod Austin from the
> Downtown Business Improvement District came to describe the recycling
> program that they are doing. When I learned that the BID was taking over the
> trash pickup of the street containers downtown I saw an opportunity to make
> use of the recycling bins that the city had obtained through a grant from
> Coke. We got the bins about a year ago but could not afford to pay to get
> anyone to empty them. So they just sat in storage.  Rod was willing to have
> his maintenance guy pick up the recycling along with the regular trash but
> we had to figure out what to do with the stuff. I contacted Max Bauer over
> at Allied Waste and he agreed to provide a recycling dumpster for free. The
> materials are added into the load from the blue bags program that get bailed
> up and shipped to Washington for processing.
>
> We also heard from Matt Hisel from Home Resource. His organization
> generates $450,000 per year recycling building materials. He encouraged the
> council to look at recycling as an economic development opportunity. If we
> can find more local uses for the commodities we can increase the value.
> There are a number of small business opportunities but they will need
> startup help.
>
> The committee wasn’t the best place to come up with ideas on how to improve
> recycling opportunities in Missoula but hopefully the discussion will
> continue in a less formal setting.
> <snip>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> -----Please delete extra content when replying to messages------
>
> Note: This list is NOT an official service of the City Of Missoula. But
> posts to this list may be entered into the public record.
> Subscribe or view archives at Missoulagov.org
> List Serve hosting provided by www.CedarMountainSoftware.com.
>



-- 
"Apathy is a vice."  Oscar Wilde
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.cmslists.com/pipermail/missoulagov/attachments/20091029/c90dbe76/attachment.htm>