County sends glass to landfill as recyclers halt operations 

By Mallory Kruml 
Posted 10/30/24

 

 

Last month, Jefferson County joined the growing list of statewide municipalities that cannot recycle glass after a crucial link in the regional recycling chain closed its …

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County sends glass to landfill as recyclers halt operations 

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Last month, Jefferson County joined the growing list of statewide municipalities that cannot recycle glass after a crucial link in the regional recycling chain closed its doors. 

“I always thought the buyers of the cheap plastic types would disappear before glass buyers,” Jefferson County solid waste manager Al Cairns said. “But we can see by the cratered demand for locally collected glass that none of the materials that are accepted as part of Jefferson County’s recycling program are immune to market fluctuations.”

Cairns said the county’s public works department will continue to accept glass “until we’ve allowed time for the market to sort itself out and to solicit feedback from the Board of County Commissioners.” 

“The real solution, and one that has failed in several versions to come out of committee in the last two State Legislature sessions, is to put the onus of funding recycling programs on the producers and profiteers of single-use packaging,” he said.

Cairns said that Jefferson County has been shipping its glass to Strategic Materials, a Seattle-based glass and plastic recycling processor, since 2006 without a hiccup. 

Ardagh, an industry leader in glass and metal container production, was one of Strategic Materials’ largest buyers until last month. 

The closure of Ardagh’s Seattle plant — blamed on ongoing pressure from low-priced imports from China, Chile, and Mexico and market conditions — significantly decreased the demand for glass, prompting Strategic Materials to stop accepting it. 

Market conditions changed in April 2023 when Anheuser-Busch InBev — one of Ardagh’s largest buyers and a major beer producer — was caught in consumer backlash against a Bud Light marketing campaign featuring transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. 

The campaign sparked negative commentary among conservative media personalities, politicians and celebrities, resulting in an estimated $1 billion loss in Bud Light sales and its dethroning as the top-selling U.S. beer. 

In June, Ardagh representatives said the closure of the Seattle plant — which primarily made wine bottles — was unrelated to Anheuser-Busch InBev or the beer market and that they didn’t know when or whether the plant would reopen. 

After being notified of the closure, the county’s public works department began stockpiling glass but hit capacity two weeks later. Since October, the county has been paying to send it to a regional landfill.

“$10,000 a month is the average monthly cost for landfilling the glass,” Cairns said. “Like all costs related to the recycling program, these are paid with revenue generated by the tipping fee for garbage disposal.”

Cairns said that other cities and counties affected by the glass market downturn have already stopped accepting it. 

The city of Port Angeles wrote that it would temporarily suspend its household glass recycling program after Oct. 19 in a press release and recommends residents consider the change when purchasing glass containers, as reuse or disposal of glass with household waste are the only options until further notice. 

“Like them, we will need to choose an amount of loss we’re willing to take on a failed commodity market that is showing no sign of short-term rebound or protection from offshore imports competition,” he said. “The only fix to the current issue with glass demand being almost nonexistent in this region is to increase demand and to solve the problem of cheap foreign imports.” 

Cairns, attending a weekly roundtable hosted by King County to identify solutions to the issue, will meet with the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners to brief them before making any changes to the recycling program. 

“Making changes to the recycling program is not like turning a valve on and off,” he said. “It takes a lot of effort to educate the public about the how’s and why’s of recycling so we don’t want to make a big change only to have some new market appear and then switch back to collecting glass again.”