Tarnished trash

COEUR d'ALENE - Paper collected in a single-stream recycling process can get contaminated with plastic, metal and glass and become less valuable to businesses looking to reuse it.

Still, Waste Management is asking people in the Coeur d'Alene-Spokane area - where single-stream recycling is practiced - to continue putting paper materials in recycling containers. It's being reused, a company official said.

Robin Freedman, a spokeswoman for Waste Management, said Friday the company invested $18 million in its single-stream recycling facility, which opened in 2012 on 8 acres near Spokane. Single-stream recycling means all the recyclables, regardless of material, are mixed together when collected. They are later sorted.

"We process 6,000 tons of recyclable material a month and (the facility) is the centerpiece of a regional strategy aimed at dramatically reducing waste and boosting recycling in the area," Freedman said.

All of the recyclable material that Waste Management collects in Coeur d'Alene goes to that Spokane-area facility, where it is sorted and processed to be reused, she said.

The founder of Coeur d'Alene Glass Recycling Co., however, argued in a My Turn opinion column published Friday in The Press that much of the paper people toss in recycling containers isn't actually being reused.

Ben Mello and his wife, Melissa, operated Coeur d'Alene Glass Recycling for two years before turning it over in March to Darla Kuhman to operate. She also happens to be the current mayor of Athol.

Ben Mello said customers of recycled paper often can't reuse what Waste Management is offering.

"I have learned that the majority of paper products placed into the recycling bin end up in the trash," Mello wrote.

He is a board member of Kootenai Environmental Alliance, which is looking into his findings.

"Is single-stream recycling something this community can be proud of or not?" said Adrienne Cronebaugh, executive director at Kootenai Environmental Alliance. "That's what we're looking into."

Mello also said containers labeled for recyclables at McEuen Park are "nothing more than trash bins."

He said the material is just tossed in with the trash once it's picked up, according to what he was told by City Councilman Dan Gookin.

"Even though the city has recycling containers on McEuen, their contents are thrown away, not recycled," Gookin wrote to Mello earlier this month on Facebook. "That's because park goers put anything and everything into the bins, not just recyclable material."

Mello shared the exchange between himself and Gookin with The Press.

The city's spokesman, Keith Erickson, says the material is recycled.

The city keeps the items separated after picking them up, delivering the recyclables to Waste Management.

The city makes it clear to the company which items were collected in recycling containers and which were in trash cans. Waste Management sorts it from there, Erickson said Friday.

"The city is diligent in being sure that we provide options either to throw away garbage or recycle," he said. "Then we work with Waste Management to make sure that we recycle what we can."

Doug Krapas, environmental manager of Inland Empire Paper Co. in Spokane, said the company prefers not to use paper from single-stream recycling.

That is because of the economic cost of removing contaminants, and wear and tear on equipment.

Mello wrote in his column that Inland Empire Paper has a warehouse with many contaminated and unusable bales of paper from Waste Management. Krapas said that's not the case.

The company has bales of paper from Waste Management with some contaminants, including plastics, metals and glass, he said. But the material is usable, because it's not too contaminated.

"We have a system to remove those contaminants from the paper," Krapas said Friday. "The cost of dealing with single-stream here is very, very significant."

The company gets paper as far away as 1,500 miles away to avoid single-stream recycled paper.

Along with recycled paper, Inland Empire Paper uses waste wood chips from local sawmills as a source of fiber.

While Inland Empire Paper doesn't like single-stream recycled paper, China does, Krapas said.

That country accounts for more than half of the global trade of recycled paper. In 2009, for example, two-thirds of all recovered paper in the United States went to China, he said.

"There are not forests over there like there are here," Krapas said. "So they import their natural resources, and paper is certainly one of them."