Grand Coulee interested in recycling

Grand Coulee’s city council has asked Mayor Chris Christopherson to pursue recycling with the Regional Board of Mayors.

Councilman Erin Nielsen took up the recycling banner at the council meeting a week ago and said that it would cost money, “but this is the right time to do it.”

Recycling has been a thorn in the side of regional mayors for sometime, but any way they have looked at it, there is a cost associated with it.

Nielsen stated that the cities and towns in the area need to look past the cost and bite the bullet.

Councilmember Tom Poplawski said he had just attended a meeting where recycling was a topic, and that “if everyone throughout the country recycled it would only account for seven percent of what is now going into landfills.”

The mayors have long been concerned that recycling would pick their own pockets by cutting the amount of material that goes through the transfer station, the source of the revenue that funds the operation of the transfer station.

Nielsen said that he recycles.

Recycling has been pushed by Coulee Dam Councilmember Gayle Swagerty. She continues to bring up the idea whenever she has the opportunity.

The mayors’ had an official from Sunrise Disposal appear at their meeting to see if the firm that collects garbage throughout the area might have some ideas about it. It was suggested that recycling is a possibility and that the area needs to start small and then expand as the process moves along.

Recyclable materials such as plastic, glass, and other items don’t pass the cost/benefit test as far as the mayors’ have been concerned.

Transfer station Manager Randy Gumm pointed out to the mayors that some places have collected glass and taken it to the Grant County Landfill only to see it ground up and placed in the landfill.