Rural residents face limits to recycling

For those living in a city or suburb, recycling collection can seem like a given service. Residents in the remote pockets of the Corridor, however, know how difficult it can be to obtain.

Steve Smith, owner of Johnson County Refuse, said his company is able to provide both trash and recycle pick up for most of its routes. For some areas in the southeast corner of the county, though, he would have to use five to 10 more gallons of diesel daily to collect recycling for only a few stops.

'If I have to use that much fuel to pick up two stops, we're going backward,” he said.

For collection service providers, travel expenses are a common cause of limiting services in rural areas. Lisa Disbrow, spokesman for Waste Management of Iowa, said they service an approximate 40-mile radius from their location in Cedar Rapids. That service area has seven landfills and only two recycling facilities.

'In some parts of the country, especially in the rural areas, there may not be a recycling facility that allows us to provide the residential recycling service in an economic manner,” Disbrow said.

Mark Witham, a sales representative from ABC Disposal in Hiawatha, said it is easier to offer recycling in rural areas if more people are interested in the service.

For example, if only two out of ten houses in a rural area are interested, ABC would be willing to provide it - but the cost split between only two households would typically be too high for the residents to maintain.

Smith said in order for his company to service the areas they don't currently reach, they would potentially need to increase prices for those areas by $25 to $30.

High prices have been the reality for Jim Greif, a farmer outside of the city of Prairieburg. Greif currently pays more than $150 a month for trash and recycling services to his home through Republic Services of Dubuque. He said he is actively looking for cheaper services. While recycling is important to him, if he could cut his current cost in half he would likely opt to part with recycling.

'Money talks,” he said. 'It always boils down to the money.”

Despite the challenges of reaching some rural areas, Smith said he has seen dramatic growth of recycling since he started offering it in the early ‘90s.

'It seems like when we first started recycling, maybe one out of twenty or twenty-five wanted to recycle, and now it's one out of the 20 or 25 who don't want to recycle,” he said.

Disbrow said in light of increased inquiries about recycling in rural areas, Waste Management is working to expand their services. She also said there are far more rural areas they are able to reach than residents may realize and they are also trying increase awareness.

'I think sometimes residents who live in the country think ‘I can't have curbside recycling,' and that's not the case,” she said.

l Comments: (319) 339-3106; cassidy.riley@thegazette.com