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

[MOLLY GALUSHA]

I want my shards! I would pay to have my glass crushed. I have uses for it once the aggragate is small and the edges are taken off. If you want to see crushed glass put to good use, check out the driveway for the LEED Building in Billings that the Northern Plains Resource Council remodeled. It gleams like something out of the Emerald City in the "Wizard of Oz". Bring back the crusher or encourage someone to modify a cement mixer to act like a giant rock polisher and take off the edges then we could all use glass mulch in our sidewalks.

Molly
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jed Taylor<mailto:mcc at offthedial.com> 
  To: missoulagov at cmslists.com<mailto:missoulagov at cmslists.com> 
  Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2009 1:43 AM
  Subject: Re: [MissoulaGov] Recycling (was Committee Update 10-28-09)


  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>
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