One Dickinson County Community Says It’s Seeing A Huge Success In Its Recycling Program
One Dickinson County Community Says It’s Seeing A Huge Success In Its Recycling Program
February 17, 2022Steve Schwaller
(Spirit Lake)– As Dickinson county supervisors talk about possibly exploring some changes to the county’s recycling program, Spirit Lake officials say the program in that city is enjoying a lot of success. City Administrator Gregg Owens attributes that to some changes made several years ago…
“We have seen residential participation at record levels, way beyond what we had with Shamrock. And we saw a continual and steady decline in commercial participation under Shamrock for a period of many years, and that participation has more than tripled since we went to being served by Waste Management. So in terms of recycling itself, we’ve got a good thing going and we are taking a lot of pressure off that landfill which is the most important part as far as we’re concerned.”
Owens adds the service is being offered to all residents, including those in apartment buildings…
“Obviously if anybody hearing the broadcast has has any confusion about that they’re welcome to call city hall any time and those questions can be answered in a matter of about 30 seconds. So it’s easy to do. Commercial is more of a voluntary thing. If they want to recycle they need to call Waste Management, they need to set up getting it done. They have rates that are very favorable for commercial businesses to participate. And I think that’s why we’ve seen the participating, because they want to. The system we had before was, well, it wasthe only thing we had. It wasn’t ideal, and we made the best of it. I’ll just put it that way.”
Owens disputes assertions that some Spirit Lake residents are taking their recycling to drop-offs in other communities…
“Any suggestion that a large volume of material is going into containers around the county from Spirit Lake residents wouldn’t even make sense. Most of the volume that we had when we had containers at the street garage wasn’t coming from city residents, it was coming from around the county. And I wish that could have continued, but the county didn’t want to contribute to that any more and that was fine. And then Shamrock decided it couldn’t provide service any more and it just kind of forced our hand because by law we’re required to have a recycling program.”
Owens made his comments in an interview this (Thurs.) morning with KUOO news.
