Warroad's recycling habits need improvement

In the summer of 1995, I worked a three month internship at The Warroad Pioneer, which I'm sorry to say has since ceased operation. This was the first professional newspaper that I worked for in my career, and it turned out to be a wonderful experience. I had only worked at Bemidji State University's newspaper for about a year and half before landing the internship. At The Pioneer I gained experience in sports, feature, beat and government reporting. I designed pages, took and developed photographs and was responsible for community relations. The best part is that I remain friends with the owners nearly 30 years later.

June 20, 1995

By Devlyn Brooks

Warroad's report card for recycling is in, and it isn't good. The City of Warroad has been fined about $510 in the last two months for contamination of its recycled material collected by KaMaR Recycling.

According to the contract the city entered into as of April 1 with KaMaR, Warroad is allowed a .25 cubic yards per container per month contamination average before any fines can be imposed.

KaMaR defines a contaminant as anything that is not recyclable, such as plastic bags, ice cream pails, aerosol spray cans and window glass.

KaMaR determines the contamination average by totaling up the amount of contamination for each container they receive from a site, such as Warroad, and then they divide the total amount of contamination by the number of containers they picked up from that site in a month.

The site is then charged $60 for each ton of contamination they have over the allotted .25 cubic yards average.

Warroad has been over that level for both April and May, costing the city $182.40 and $326.40, respectively.

"The biggest problem is with the plastic," said Mike Gerdes, coordinator of KaMaR. "I don't know whether it's a lack of education, or people just figure if it is plastic, it goes in the plastic."

"It is just an education process," City Clerk Dale Zaiser said. "People are doing a good job recycling. It's just that we have to educate them on what they (KaMaR) can and can't take.

"There are so many varieties of plastics, people aren't aware that only certain types can be put in the KaMaR bins," Zaiser said.

Gerdes admitted that it is a "tricky thing" to recycle plastic correctly, but he said that KaMaR only takes "number one (PETE) and number two (HDPE) bottles and jugs."

Gerdes said that it is difficult to determine just what is acceptable because margarine tubs, Cool Whip containers and ice cream pails all have number ones or twos for recycling, also. However, the facility that KaMaR sells their materials to doesn't except those items. They are contamination.

"If you can screw a top on the bottle, you can put it in the bin," Gerdes said, "and if the cover snaps over the top of the container, don't put it in the bins."

Another major problem is that when people bring things to the recycling bins, they bring it in plastic bags, in paper bags, in boxes or in some other kind of container. The bags and boxes aren't allowed in the bins. They are considered contamination by KaMaR. Gerdes said that people are just to dump the recyclable material into the bins, and throw the bags and boxes away.

Zaiser said that to help curb this problem, the city installed a garbage dumpster by the recycling site to provide a place for the bags and boxes.

Earlier this year, each site involved with KaMaR was granted a three-month grace period from January to March to show them what they would pay in contamination fines.

According to a memo sent to Zaiser, Warroad would have paid $547.20 for those three months. Out of the 27 sites listed, only one other site would have had to pay more than Warroad.

One remedy to the situation of paying fines is for Warroad to hire somebody to pick out the contamination before KaMaR picks up the containers.

Middle River did this, and for the three-month grace period, it would not have paid a cent in fines.

Middle River's secret was to include cleaning out the contamination in the KaMaR bins as part of the duties of their city maintenance worker.

However, Sally Gentry, Middle River's city clerk, said that her personal feelings are that it probably costs more to have their maintenance worker clean the bin than it would to pay the fine.

"If we are paying his hourly wage, and he doesn't have anything else to do, sur it pays off," she said, "but not if he has other things he could be doing."

Zaiser said he doesn't think that it would be worth having someone take care of Warroad's site.

"Basically, people are doing what's right," he said, "they just don't know that you can't dump a cardboard box full of tin cans and leave the box."

Portions of this article were contributed by Lori Bothum.