Recycling: Where does it go & what's the cost?

When the city picks up your recyclables from the curb, the items begin a long journey to be sorted, processed, and manufactured into something new — if they can be recycled at all. 

By Mary Helen Montgomery

*This is the second installment of a four-part series on recycling in Chattanooga.

Fast facts

• The City of Chattanooga contracts with the company WestRock, located off South Market Street, to sort and sell our recyclable materials.

• A material is only considered “recyclable” if there is a customer, usually in the manufacturing industry, who wants to buy it.

• Recycling is not financially profitable for municipalities; typically, cities pay outside companies to take materials off their hands.

It's all economics

Why can a cardboard box be recycled, but a styrofoam cup cannot? The answer has everything to do with economics.

“Technically everything is recyclable — you can make something into a new thing,” says Cody Marshall of the D.C.-based nonprofit, The Recycling Partnership. “But when we're talking about the stuff that's collected at the curb, it's really packaging [material] that has enough volume to make it into a new product economically.”

The main factor that determines whether a material is “recyclable” is whether there’s a market for it.

And while there is a market for much of what is collected by the recycling program, the materials don't have any monetary value to our local government. It takes so much work to process recyclables into something new, that the city actually has to pay a company (WestRock) to take, sort, and sell our collected recyclables. This kind of financial arrangement between a municipality and a recycling company is typical in the U.S.

The City of Chattanooga pays WestRock $47.50 for every ton of collected recyclables that we deliver, and last fiscal year, we sent 5,117 tons to WestRock. (We also have to pay to take material to the landfill, at a rate of $32.32 per ton, and last fiscal year we sent 61,223 tons to the landfill.) In the short term, recycling is more expensive than putting refuse in the landfill, but it's an investment in the environment.

What happens after recycling is collected?

Material collected in curbside recycling bins and at recycling centers go to WestRock, located off South Market Street. There, the materials are sorted by machinery and people, and sold either directly to manufacturers or to companies who process the material to sell to manufacturers.

WestRock is a huge company with locations around the world. While they do operate material recovery facilities like the one in Chattanooga, their primary business is producing paper packaging products. WestRock sells the aluminum, steel, glass, and plastic after sorting, but they keep paper and cardboard to create new products right here in Chattanooga. Next time you order a pizza, look at the box closely — you might notice WestRock’s logo on it.

Does everything I put in my bin get recycled?

Currently, there is enough demand from manufacturers that aluminum and steel cans, glass, and paper products are generally recycled. However, manufacturers are only interested in certain types of plastic. Chattamatters will dive deeper into the complications of recycling plastic in an upcoming story.

Call 311 if you want to enroll in the city's curbside recycling program!