Municipal recycling fees expected to go up

A reduced demand for recyclable materials is expected to hit local towns in the pocketbook in the coming year, with costs for recycling services through the Delaware Solid Waste Authority (DSWA) anticipated to rise in 2009 as the towns of Millville, Fenwick Island and Rehoboth Beach get ready to enter into or renew municipal recycling contracts with DSWA.

“The demand overseas has definitely waned for recyclables, especially China,” explained Rich Von Stetten, senior manager of statewide recycling for DSWA, this week. “This, in turn, has made the markets for recyclables volatile, to say the least.”

Von Stetten said that, three months ago, DSWA was getting paid $65 per ton for its single-stream material – a product of the state’s new single-stream recycling program, in which recyclables are not sorted by type. He said DSWA is now paying out $50 per ton to recycle the material.

“Overseas has stopped buying, and the domestic mills are maxed out,” Von Stetten added.

Despite that glut in the market for recyclable materials, Von Stetten said he is confident in the future of the statewide recycling program.

“In Delaware, the recycling has never been stronger. Today, we do have the 165 drop-off centers and nearly 40,000 paying curbside customers,” he noted. “It’s important that people keep recycling, even in the downturn with the economy internationally. This too shall pass! DSWA is committed to recycling all materials received, even if it costs us to do so now.”

While DSWA’s recycling effort has always struggled to match its income to its costs, Von Stetten has been working in the last year or so toward making the program self-sufficient without direct funding from the state government. The drop in the demand for recyclable materials won’t help him meet that goal.

Instead, it will fall to the municipalities to pick up some of the slack, which they can potentially partially offset by a resulting reduction in their tipping fees for dumping less trash at landfills. Still, the increase in costs for the towns are likely to be felt either at town halls or in residents’ wallets as those costs are passed along.

“As the contracts mature, rates will go up during ’09,” Von Stetten acknowledged.

That will mean increased recycling costs to the towns of Fenwick Island, Millville and Rehoboth Beach this year, from what those towns would have or did pay in past years.

“At that point, the towns will have to make a decision, and that would be to stay with DSWA, do it themselves, or contract out to another company,” said Von Stetten.

The towns that choose to absorb the cost increase from DSWA may, in turn, be looking at passing along some of that cost directly to residents, as has already been discussed in Rehoboth Beach, where residents, to this point, have not had to pay directly for the service.

That is also the case in Fenwick Island, where discussion of the increased recycling cost is likely to happen in the coming months. Millville is just commencing its own municipal recycling program, after losing in 2008 a drop-off center located near town hall and not yet finding a new location.

Von Stetten said individual subscribers to the DSWA’s curbside recycling program won’t have to worry quite yet about an increase on their fees.

“Residential subscription rates will stay the same for now,” he said.

Other local towns aren’t in the clear for potentially rising recycling costs, however, as Von Stetten noted that the contracts for municipal recycling in South Bethany, Bethany Beach and Lewes are due for renewal in January of 2010.