Clean Sweep

This week, the agency that oversees both the recycling center and landfill here expects to finish writing a bid to seek a facility outside Santa Fe where the joint city/county agency can ship recyclables. The new contract would significantly shift the mission of the agency—known by a pronunciation of its acronym as SWaMA—and the Buckman Road Recycling & Transfer Station that it oversees. Officials say they would then only use the outdated sorting machinery at the local recycling center as a backup to sift through the material.

Cost savings and increasing the dismal countywide recycling rate are the goals behind the decision, which could become effective as soon as this summer, officials say.

"The key is cost," SWaMA's director, Randall Kippenbrock, told the board comprised of county commissioners and city councilors. "We cannot generate enough revenue to cover our costs."

The move could mean that Santa Fe finally begins employing a single-stream recycling system. That will depend partly on how the request for proposals turns out and also what the city decides to do.

City officials have long considered proposals to alter the current system that requires hauling two plastic boxes to the curb each week, one for glass and one for everything else.

Under one recent idea, residents would place all their recyclables into one garbage-sized rolling bin—save glass, which would be dropped off at city-operated sites or picked up by private haulers at the cost of the customer.

But forcing residents to drop off glass or to pay a private hauler to pick it up might continue to hamper Santa Fe's recycling rate, which is measured by the tons of waste diverted from landfills to reuse. Glass is one of the heaviest recyclables collected.

Cities that have gone to full single-stream recycling systems have seen dramatic increases in recycling rates. Backers say that's because single-stream makes it easier on residents by relieving the burden of sorting recyclables

District 2 Councilor Joseph Maestas, a SWaMA board member, interjected as the board considered a proposal to adopt recommendations made by a private consulting firm in a December report.

"What are we currently diverting right now in terms of recyclables?" he said.

Kippenbrock responded that it's still "under 10 percent."

"How much can we realize," Maestas asked, if Santa Fe ships its recyclables to another facility with infrastructure in place to sort single-stream?

Kippenbrock predicted the rate could increase to between 18 and 20 percent the first year.

"I could be wrong," on the exact figure, he added, but "there'll definitely be an increase."

Kippenbrock also said the change would mean the city could begin collecting waxed cardboard and those nettlesome Nos. 3 to 7 plastics, whose resin content makes them an unattractive product for manufacturers. Currently, SWaMA doesn't accept either.

The decision comes after a yearslong, systemwide audit of the effectiveness of how the city and county collects and recycles waste. Auditors with a private firm, Leidos, examined the costs of the city and county programs from the curbside up and found that SWaMA won't have the money it takes to run the current waste collection and diversion programs without changes to them.

Auditors, for example, projected SWaMA will "significantly under-recover costs" in the 2015 fiscal year based on estimates of operating costs, expected revenue estimated to come from the sale of recyclables and the fees it charges for collecting hazardous waste, electronic waste and green waste.

The landfill side of the agency, which charges tipping fees to customers like the city that dump waste at the Caja del Rio Landfill, will collect $1.4 million in profits in the 2015 fiscal year from those fees, auditors found. Meanwhile, the recycling side of the operation will lose some $2 million, resulting in the $622,000 net loss.

By 2018, under current conditions, that loss is expected to swell to $3.8 million, auditors estimated, with the recycling side of the operation remaining the agency's problem child.

BuRRT for years has struggled to make revenue from the sale of recyclable material it collects. The problem starts at the curbsides of Santa Fe's famously eco-friendly residents: Auditors found that just over half of the city's recycling customers set out recycling bins on any given route, 25 percent lower than similarly sized cities. Santa Fe still diverts less than 10 percent of its waste stream to recycling or reuse, pulling down the statewide average, which is 16 percent.

Nationally in 2012, note auditors, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that Americans produced 251 million tons of trash, recycling 65 million tons of it while composting another 21 million tons, for a recycling rate of 34.5 percent.

As for the recyclables the agency does collect, it struggles to clean, sort and sell them. In this isolated region, there's a lack of secondary markets for products like glass and those pesky 3 to 7 plastics. BuRRT's machinery is outdated, unable to sort even glass, which must be pulverized in a glass crusher. And although that glass is collected, it's not going anywhere. Last summer, a 500-ton mound of crushed glass sat unused outside the facility.

Based on all those conclusions, auditors estimate that the agency could save up to $200,000 by contracting out recycling services—essentially paying someone to haul recyclables to a larger material recovery facility such as one in Albuquerque.

Officials are eager to get the message out.

"Once we get the contract in place for third-party processing and/or transportation, then we'll be able to ramp up our advertis[ing], media awareness," said Kippenbrock, "that we do accept all of this."

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the board voted to increase tipping fees.

Santa Fe Reporter