Washington County had an increase in recycling in June. Lynn Whaley with WEMIGA Waste, which operates the county’s recycling center, said recycling was up about 16 tons in June. At Tuesday’s Washington County Board of Supervisors meeting Whaley said some of the market has improved recently, “The plastic right now is $85 a ton to get rid of it which isn’t a huge amount if you look at what we’re hauling there. The cardboard is actually back up, so we’re getting some money back in cardboard. The last I checked it was around $30-35. So, cardboard market has gone back up. Yeah, it’s better than paying for it.”

In the spring of 2018, the market for recyclable waste shifted and it started costing contractors to get rid of some materials instead of being paid for them. The market was disrupted when China stopped paying for recyclable materials like plastic and paper from the U.S.