The Austin City Council will consider extending its recycling contract with Greenstar this week.
But not everyone thinks it's a good idea. Recycling advocates say extending the current contract is a bad risk for city tax payers.
“The city has a lousy contract now," said Robin Schneider with Texas Campaign for the Environment. "It would only save the city about $15,000 but it means we continue to lose $90 to $300,000 a month. What we need to do is get out of this contract as soon as possible.”
The City Of Austin started single stream recycling in October 2008. Since it doesn't have a recycling sorting facility in town to handle the large amounts of unsorted plastics, cardboard and aluminum, it contracted with an out of town company called Greenstar.
The city expected to make money but instead has lost more than $2 million.
Greenstar blames the economic downturn saying it had negative effect on the recycling market. The company is offering to cut fees by $3.50 cents a ton if the city allows Greenstar to collect all of Austin's recyclables until March 2011 and at least 50% of Austin's recyclables through September 2011.
“A $3.50 cent decrease hardly amounts to a hill of beans,” said Schneider. “It's time to get out of this contract, sort our stuff locally and start making money or at least breaking even on our recyclables.”
But Fayez Kazi, with the Solid Waste Services Commission, doesn't think the city will have its own sorting facility up and running by September. He supports extending Greenstar's contract.
“We want to make sure all our recyclables have a place to go,” he said. “I don’t believe the city’s facility will be ready when the contract ends in September. I also have a feeling it won’t be ready by May of 2011. I want to make sure there is a place for recyclables to go.”
Kazi also believes extending the contract is a good short term deal because the city will be saving money as it looks to the future to build its own recycling sorting facility. Council will make a decision on whether to extend Greenstar’s current contract at Thursday’s meeting.
