The Four Corners Recycling Initiative is running out of money.
Without additional revenue by November, the nonprofit won’t have the funds to pay for recycling bins in Mancos and Dolores to be emptied regularly, said Casey Simpson the organizer.
“All over the county, we are losing money on recycling,” Simpson said.
As commodity prices crashed with the price of oil, the amount the nonprofit was paying to empty recycling bins doubled, he said.
Some commodities prices follow the price of oil because when oil is expensive it makes sense to recycling materials in manufacturing, Simpson said.
Right now, it’s cheaper to manufacture fresh projects, he said.
To cut costs, the nonprofit reduced pickups at the recycling bins from every week to every two weeks, leading to overflow issues.
To help cover costs of the recycling programs, the nonprofit is asking Montezuma County and the town governments of Mancos and Dolores to help pay for haulers to transport the recycling to the landfill.
The nonprofit has been relying on state and federal grants, local fundraising, corporate sponsorships and volunteer labor.
“I don’t think that’s a sustainable way of paying for waste management ” he said.
Because the markets are down, if FCRI ran out of money support for recycling in Dolores and Mancos, a private hauler would be unlikely to pick up the services right away because it is not profitable, Simpson said.
The FCRI bins at the Montezuma County Landfill and Dolores Public Lands Office would stay open because the landfill bins don’t cost anything to operate, and the federal government covers the cost of Dolores Public Lands bins.
If some of the services were discontinued, it would likely hurt the volume of recyclable the county collects, said Shak Powers, landfill manager.
FCRI was responsible for collecting 196 tons of materials last year, he said.
While commodity prices are down right now, the county commissioners would still like to see the landfill become a hub for regional recycling, commissioner Larry Don Suckla said.
As part of that goal, the county applied for and recently received a $15,000 grant from the Carton Council to recycle items like milk and juice cartons.
The money helped pay for a new trailer to store the materials and Baker Sanitation has already started collecting cartons has part of their hybrid single-stream recycling program, Shak said.
As the program develops, he would like to see the schools and Southwest Memorial Hospital get involved because they are major consumers of cartons.
To help grow the program, Suckla has been working with State Rep. J. Paul Brown, R-Ignacio, to change a state law that requires landfills to regularly sell of their recyclables, which can flood the market.
New manufacturers that use the products within Montezuma County would also help stabilize demand and eliminate transportation costs.
Western Excelsior in Mancos already accepts some paper, and one possibility for expansion could be a plant that would turn glass into stone used in hydroponics, Powers said.
“Colorado does seem to be a great market for hydroponic stones,” he said.
mshinn@durangoherald.com