Set aside in a corner of the Jefferson County Solid Waste Transfer Station is one solitary, sizable cube of non-recyclable plastic bags.

Call it Matt Hall's private collection. Hall, the recycling center's operations manager, has been pulling thousands of bags from the center's heaping mounds of incoming recycling loads over the last few weeks. The final product? A 6-foot, 1,500-pound bale.

"It's amazing what the little tiny bags combine to," Hall said.

For the last 20 years, Jefferson County has accepted only two types of plastics for recycling. Five other grades are not accepted and are disposed of with other garbage. And it's amazing how those plastics add up - nearly 4½ tons a month, Hall said.

"I've been watching it going into the garbage for 11 years and I hate it," he said.

Although "it's too early to tell," said Al Cairns, solid waste coordinator for Jefferson County, within the year that may all change.

Last week, contract negotiations began between Jefferson County and Skookum Environmental Services, the current contractor for the recycling center. At the heart of the negotiations is a multi-faceted and contentious issue: Whether or not to find a broker to recycle all types of plastics.

"On the surface it sounds like a dream come true," Cairns said. "But when you scratch just below the surface, there are some deep concerns." Concerns such as environmental responsibility, human rights and consumerism.

Business connection

The chief contender for the job is lumber giant Weyerhaeuser Corp., a company that spans every aspect of industry, from production to recycling. "If there's a market, they can find it," Hall said.

But finding a market for plastics isn't the problem. Finding a location where workers are treated well is. "The concern with the county is that most markets for plastics are in India and China, countries with pretty lax labor and environmental laws," Cairns said. "We have major concerns with safety issues."

The situation is both an environmental and political dilemma, Cairns said. On the one side there is the question of whether to keep sending 4½ tons of potentially recyclable material to an Eastern Washington landfill every month. On the other is the question of whether it is ethical for America to "basically export our problems" to a country where children may end up processing "our excess," he said.

Weyerhaeuser representatives contacted for this story would not comment about the standards of the businesses within their export markets.

But with the high price of fuel and other shipping charges, the recycling business has to be mutually beneficial to make sense, said Lorena Young, a Weyerhaeuser recycling account manager in Oregon.

"This is not the United States just dumping garbage somewhere," she said. "China has a robust plastics industry ... and very strict standards about what they take."

If Chinese importers see something they don't like, the shipment may be confiscated, containers and all. And at up to $6,000 per container, it doesn't make financial sense to risk losing a shipment if "there wasn't value for both sides," Young said.

"Weyerhaeuser is a for-profit business. We are recyclers, and that's what we're in the business to do."

Downside of recycling

Not only do Americans have a dependence on oil, we're addicted to plastics as well. "Plastics are such an ubiquitous part of our consumer habits," Cairns said. "Just about everything uses one sort or another."

It wasn't until recently that grocery stores across the nation began attempting to stint plastic and paper bag usage by selling or offering reusable shopping bags.

In Port Townsend, a group of activists with the slogan BYOB - bring your own bag - is pushing a petition to convince the City Council to ban plastic bags altogether in retail stores. For information on how to get involved with the petition drive, contact organizers Libby Atkins at 385-2735 or Paula Hill at 379-1234.

"The enlightened consumer's first step is to start using reusable bags," Cairns said, "which is great," but the problem goes beyond how to sustainably carry groceries, he said.

The recycling industry, like all business, is fueled by demand.

And when it comes to that demand, not all plastics are created equal - and their markets are as diverse as their uses.

Although plastic grades are commonly classified on a scale of 1 through 7, there are potentially hundreds of grades based on plastic density and content. Their uses go beyond just remanufacturing into more containers or bottles. Recycled plastics are used in everything from speed bumps and truck mud flaps to hammocks and countertops.

According to a May 2007 article by the American Chemistry Council, the highest demand for high-grade plastics, such as No. 1 PET, is for fibers in carpet and other textiles. The main reuse for No. 2 HDPE containers is bottles.

Recycled plastics such as deli food and produce containers, however, are "increasingly difficult to find a market for because they've already been reprocessed," Cairns said. And the further the reuse the lower the market value, he said, meaning a gradual degradation in the quality and usability of recycled goods. Most low-grade mixed plastics are then sent to supply the booming markets in China or India, where they are used in the production of plastic toys and thousands of other plastic items.

Matter of design

In the end, the problem of plastics in America originates with the consumer.

"It's a question of what our responsibility is," Cairns said. "Recycling as a whole is a beneficial enterprise. But it can potentially be a salve for the conscience."

While biodegradable grocery bags are trendy, and a step in the right direction, a broader change in industry standards is necessary, Cairns said.

"It's a matter of design. We really need to make a conscious shift to a cradle-to-cradle scenario and move beyond looking at materials being downgraded with each successive reuse. In nature, there is no such thing as 'waste.' There's simply no good reason ... that we can't develop material streams that have higher value and inexhaustible functions after a product's initial use."

County budget

Dealing with excess responsibly is always easier with deep pockets, Cairns said.

"The larger counties can afford to have a larger social conscience," he said.

For smaller counties such as Jefferson, making a decision about the "plastics problem" will hinge on a combination of community awareness and departmental leadership, he said.

Although there is no official timetable for the Jefferson County-Skookum negotiations, "we'll definitely have a contract extension by the end of the year," he said.

The county currently pays "full tipping" costs to dispose of the roughly 4½ tons of unaccepted plastics per month, a charge of $113.96 per ton with tax, or about $500 total.

As for Hall's block of bags: "It will be turned into plastic decking," he said. He recently found a side broker in Kent to buy the bale. "It's $93 we saved from going in the garbage," he said. "Not to mention a whole lot of bags."