Bay County Lacks a Recycling Program, Making it Difficult for Residents to Recycle

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WJHG/WECP) – We all know the saying “reduce, reuse, recycle”, nonetheless, that may be troublesome for Bay County residents due to the dearth of a conventional recycling program.

Nearly 800 tons of trash are dumped at Bay County’s Steelfield Landfill every day. The landfill supervisor, Glen Ogburn, says there isn’t a county recycling program, and there possible received’t be one anytime quickly.

“For many years, Bay County relied on the Bay County Waste Energy Facility for recycling. Even that wasn’t a conventional way of recycling. We got credits for producing energy from the amount of waste, the plastics, and stuff. Unfortunately, we closed it because of the cost of operation a while back,” mentioned Ogburn.

The incinerator because the Waste Energy Facility would burn trash like plastics to produce electrical energy and the county would get compensated for it. But since its closing, plastic together with different recyclable supplies like glass, aluminum, and paper sits in landfills.

“We haven’t established an active recycling program,” mentioned Ogburn.

While there’s not a county-wide program for family trash, there are some supplies which are recycled.

“We recycle things that we can economically do so. We recycle appliances, scrap metals, things of that nature, things that we have a local market for,” Ogburn defined.

The Environmental Protection Agency is elevating a purple flag. According to the EPA, trash is harming mom nature by threatening wildlife, contaminating our bodies of water, and altering habitats. That’s why environmentalists are talking out.

“Recycling is really important because there are so many of us living on this planet and we can’t afford to keep using it and throwing it away. We have limited resources that we have to work with so recycling is part of how we can address that,” mentioned John Hocevar, Greenpeace.

Bay County officers we talked with say for this space it all comes down to cash.

“It’s all economics. It’s not just that, recycling as a whole right now, the market for recycling is depressed. It’s difficult for anyone to recycle. I think, if you check with surrounding counties they’re under the same situation that we are. Locally, we don’t have but a couple of vendors that take recyclable materials, mostly metals. There’s nobody local that take plastics, or anything like that, so we have to ship it someplace at cost to have it recycled,” mentioned Ogburn.

In Fort Walton Beach, there’s been a door-to-door recycling program since 2014. Fort Walton Beach Public Works Manager, Jerry Gunn, tells us this system is free to residents thanks to a Solid Waste Enterprise fund. However, it value town about $400,000 to get the recycling program up and working.

“Taking our recycling material to ECUA, in Pensacola, with a cost to the city of $25 per ton. That’s about $50,000 per year,” mentioned Gunn.

Back in 2018, China stopped taking most plastics from the United States. This is usually cited as a cause in opposition to implementing a recycling program as a result of many recycling facilities have been overwhelmed with plastic. Despite this, Gunn says the recycling program in Fort Walton Beach isn’t going anyplace.

“For this to be a successful program your residents really need to participate to make it successful. As long as we can continue to divert away from the landfill, we’re going to continue to try to keep the program up and going. Recycling is not a very marketable commodity right now so there’s not a lot of money to be involved in that right now, ” said Gunn.

Environmentalist, John Hocevar with Greenpeace, argues against putting profit above all else.

“The decisions around recycling involve money and political power. So when we elect people that understand ‘We value recycling, we care about the environment.’ You know, these are value-based decisions,” mentioned Hocevar.

Many of those making the decisions say it’s tough to balance out.

“A lot of people who do come here from other regions they’re used to having an established recycling program and they’re kind of disheartened when we don’t have one, but I’ll tell you, that’s a political decision. I’ll leave that up to the citizens of Bay County. If they want to have a recycling program, but somebody has to pay for it,” said Ogburn.

While the debate continues, Hocevar says one thing we can do is limit plastics altogether.

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