Lake Norman town bans popular item in curbside recycling. Here’s why, and what to do.
For three years, Mooresville has forbidden glass bottles in its curbside recycling bins.
Brown beer bottles. Green wine bottles. Mason jars and other clear-glass bottles. All types are banned.
And it’s anyone’s guess when, if ever, you’ll be permitted to place them curbside again.
That may seem odd, given that glass bottles are quite the common recyclable and are collected curbside in Davidson, Cornelius, Huntersville and Charlotte.
Iredell County residents are out of luck, as the town of Troutman and city of Statesville also ban glass bottles from curbside recycling bins.
That’s because all three municipalities use the Benfield Sanitation Services material recycling facility in Statesville, which stopped accepting glass in early 2020, Mooresville Sanitation Supervisor Mark McCabe told The Charlotte Observer.
Mecklenburg County municipalities use private sector sanitation services such as Waste Pro, Waste Management and Waste Connection, McCabe said in an email.
Benfield operations manager Danny Lippard Jr. didn’t reply to phone and email messages from The Charlotte Observer last week.
‘No market,’ company told upset residents
Lippard was vocal on Facebook on Dec. 31, 2019, the day the company announced its glass bottles ban, and a handful of residents expressed dismay on the site.
“STOP!” the company wrote in bright red capital letters on a recycling poster Benfield posted on Facebook that day.
Glass bottles topped a list of items on the poster that residents should avoid placing in their recycling bins, Benfield instructed at the time.
“When in doubt, throw it out,” read a warning also printed in red on the poster.
An illustration of items not to include in the bins showed a green wine bottle, brown beer bottle and clear glass bottle.
“Please note that glass is no longer accepted!” read a message from the company that accompanied the illustration.
Benfield offered no reason for the glass bottle ban in its announcement. The company explained why only in direct response to a handful of residents who posted their displeasure on Facebook.
“Is there any alternative in the area to be able to still recycle glass?” Statesville resident Mary Russell Torres asked the company on Facebook. ”I hate to just ‘throw it away’”?
Added Statesville resident Drew Egerton at the time: “I understand you guys are running a business, but it’s unfortunate that recyclable items wind up getting thrown in the landfill. A bigger problem than just here sadly.”
“Yes,” Lippard replied to Egerton on Facebook, “this is the new reality with recycling, items that were once recyclable have no market now. We have no control over this, it is a national issue and changes have to be made in order meet the demands of this new normal in recycling.”
Recycling ‘not what it used to be’
After one Mooresville resident expressed frustration with the new policy in 2019, the company offered an explanation for the change.
“This is not a local issue, this is a nationwide issue,” the company replied. “Recycling is not what it used to be, with China closing its doors to most of the worlds (sic) recycling it has caused major impacts in the market which forces the changes, not us.”
Lippard also replied to another upset resident, saying: “You may think they are being recycled but in reality they are not, even if you take them to the transfer station.”
Replying to a man who also asked on Facebook why glass was no longer being accepted, Lippard said: “There is no market for it in this part of the state and there hasn’t been for several months.”
Difficulties with glass recycling were already well documented nationally.
“Why Isn’t There One Easy Way to Recycle Glass?” read a 2018 headline in Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club.
“Glass presents some tough recycling problems — including lack of end markets, contamination, and transportation costs,” according to the article. Glass is heavy and “busts up easily,” raising equipment maintenance costs, Sierra wrote.
Iredell County offers a solution
A recycling market hasn’t existed for at least a decade, if ever, for some glass bottles in the U.S., including green and blue bottles, said Teddy Boller, director of the Iredell County Solid Waste Department.
The good news?
His department has a reuse for your clean clear and brown glass bottles, Boller told the Observer.
Drop them into the specially marked large bins at the department’s Mooresville Transfer Station, 158 Macleod Drive, off East Plaza Drive (N.C. 150).
The department reuses the glass in construction projects at the county landfill, in place of stone that’s much costlier to taxpayers, he said.
This story was originally published February 1, 2023 at 1:05 PM.