Winter Garden considers scrapping its $1M recycling program

Winter Garden last week appeared poised to end its $1 million recycling disposal program as an ordinance to discontinue collections cleared its first hurdle with the city commissioners’ unanimous vote.

The ordinance comes back for a second and final vote on Dec. 12.

“What we’re doing now is not working,” Nicole Smith, the city's performance management project manager, told the commission in her presentation during the Nov. 14 city commission meeting.

Smith said residents across all districts are simply not recycling despite the city's best efforts to plainly state what is and is not recyclable — including with stickers directly on recycling containers. For instance, "Yes" items include flattened cardboard, newspapers, magazines, junk mail, cans,  glass bottles and plastics #1-7. "No" items, are, well, everything else.  

Recycling collections have dropped 22 percent since 2019, even as the city has grown 10 percent, according to Smith. 

As staff found when they shadowed pickups throughout the city, blue bins in every district are filled with non-recyclable items like construction debris, kitchen appliances, kids toys, non-recyclable plastics, paint cans. This kind of mixing "ruins any potential recyclable material," according to one of the presentation slides. 

“The bins are being used as a third pick-up day rather than true recycling,” Smith said.

She noted that if those bins bypassed the recycle facility and went right to the garbage facility (where they often ultimately end up ), the city could save an estimated $200,000 a year. The city spends $120 per ton to drop off recycling compared to $43 per ton of garbage. 

The largest savings for the recycling program would be in the temporary labor the city relies on for weekly disposal pickups. Factoring in wages, overtime, pensions and taxes, the city projects it could save  $504,851 annually on labor by eliminating the recycling  program.

Smith emphasized this was not a Winter Garden-specific situation. “There’s a little bit of apathy in the public for recycling in general,” she said. 

She pointed to 15 other cities and counties throughout Florida that had ended their own recycling collection programs, including Polk and Clay counties, Mount Dora, The Villages, Pembroke Pines and Davie.

If the city ultimately decides to nix its recycling disposal program, residents can still recycle on their own. The Winter Garden company Robert Wallick Associates Recycling accepts paper, cardboard and aluminum, but not plastics. Cardboard boxes will also be allowed to be set out for pickup with yard waste to keep trash bins clear for less bulky trash, Smith said. 

The city also plans to roll out a new initiative called Zero Waste Campaign that will focus on raising awareness about reducing and reusing strategies, like signing up for online banking, avoiding single-use items in favor of reusable products like refillable water bottles and shopping totes, opting for digital subscriptions over print and consolidating delivery items into fewer cardboard boxes.

“Reduce, reuse and recycle is in a specific order for a specific reason,” Smith said. “To truly make an impact on the environment, you need to focus on reducing first, then reusing and then recycling.”