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

[Rod Austin]

They also make beautiful sidewalks!!

 

From: missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com
[mailto:missoulagov-bounces at cmslists.com] On Behalf Of MOLLY GALUSHA
Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2009 9:37 AM
To: missoulagov at cmslists.com; Jed Taylor
Subject: Re: [MissoulaGov] Recycling (was Committee Update 10-28-09)

 

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 

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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