September is the last month recyclable materials from the City of Washington can be taken to the county facility. The Washington City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to have September 30th be the final day for the facility’s use for the city. The county’s site is operated by WEMIGA Waste with a county contract. WEMIGA is charging the city $1,500 per month to use the facility. Now that the city has weekly, single-container recycling for residents the decision to end the use of the county facility was approved.

Prior to July 1st, the city’s recycling was collected in pre-sorted bins and the contractor took those materials to the county’s facility. City Administrator Brent Hinson said things have changed including the recycling market being down, “There’s a bit of an issue potentially with commercial recycling. Well, really that center wasn’t ever intended to be a commercial recycling center. Commercial, like with commercial waste, essentially should be contracting for their own, but we’ve just had a place where you could conveniently give it away. Now that probably worked in the days when you could get decent money out of the recycling, you know that market has changed. So there’s definitely issues here for the council to consider.”

Councilman Steve Gault said businesses should use this time to arrange to have their recycling picked up by a contractor, “I used to run a business. I didn’t get my garbage hauled for free. … It’s part of what doing business is all about. I understand that we’ve supplied this for many years and everything, and telling people to pay that didn’t pay for it. But now we’re at a point where everybody’s having to pay for it because you can’t get rid of it without selling it if we’re going to continue to recycle. So, I’m sorry if you’re a commercial business you should get a hold of a contractor. You’re going to have a heck of a job contracting, because that’s what should happen. I mean, I’m sorry for the businesses, you know, I really am. If you’ve been doing it for 20 years and all of a sudden you’ve got to start paying your garbage it’s going to be a slap on you, but at the same token, you had 20 years free.”

Hinson mentioned that city residents will still be able to take hazardous waste to the site because the city is still a SEMCO Landfill member and that service is provided by SEMCO.