Shapes and Numbers
This was supposed to be about a baler—a machine that compacts material into a more easily managed shape. Sedona Recycles bought a new baler. The one they had been using for the previous eight and a half years was the last model produced by a company that went out of business when China stopped buying recycled material around 2018. To help me fully understand the significance of the new baler, I had to ask: What makes Sedona Recycles any different from my blue bin?
The answer, I found out, was many things. Whereas a national company like Waste Management is a large, for-profit, publicly traded business that provides solid waste disposal and single-stream recycling services across the nation, Sedona Recycles is a small nonprofit recycling business serving Sedona and parts of the Verde Valley. “We use a multi-stream model,” says Kathleen Ventura, executive director of Sedona Recycles. “We have separate bins for different types of material, and our patrons do most of the sorting. The idea is that by keeping things separate, we increase the recyclability of those items. Our recovery rate is close to 98% of the materials we accept.”
DIRTY TRASH
Contamination is a problem throughout the industry. Paper has high recycling rates, but only when it’s in an acceptable condition. It’s more than greasy pizza boxes; contamination also refers to unrecyclable material winding up in the recycling bin. Machinery used by processing facilities can be damaged by errant plastic bags, for example. People, too, are not immune to waste where it doesn’t belong. “Even with the self-sorting done here, we still get the dirty diapers and dead rats,” Ventura says. “You can imagine what might be happening at the bigger level.”
SUPPLY & DEMAND IN WASTE LAND
Sedona Recycles is particular about what material it accepts, because buyers are particular about what material they will purchase. It has less to do with the numbers inside the “chasing arrows” and more to do with the shapes of waste. “We have buyers for number ones in the shape of bottles, number twos in the shape of jugs, and number fives shaped like tubs,” Ventura says. The organization does what it can. Batteries are collected at $3 per pound because that’s the price the company in Phoenix charges to take them.
Kathleen Ventura inspects plastic material that patrons have dropped off. It isn’t about the numbers in the arrows, but the shape of the container. Signage helps but mistakes happen.
Styrofoam is no longer accepted because of its toxicity and energy and labor costs. “We were losing about $1,000 per week on styrofoam,” Copp says. “And we sold ALL of the styrofoam that we processed in one year for about $1,500,” Ventura adds. Sedona Recycles works with Centennial Recycling—a brokerage service that connects the dots between those who collect material and those who give it a new form. Through this intermediary, Sedona Recycles ensures the buyers they ultimately sell to are located in North America.
MORE IS LESS
In the last four years, the organization has pulled back from serving communities spread throughout the Verde Valley. “The false assumption was that with more volume, we’d make more money. That’s not true in recycling. The way you make money in recycling is when the price of the material goes up. All of these things are commodities just like oil or gold,” Copp says. “Right now we’re getting $0 for plastic, but we have a longstanding relationship with our broker, and they’re willing to move it for us and absorb the freight cost. We’re really close to having them charge us to move it, so not only are we not making money, we’re about to pay money for them to take it,” Ventura adds.
Recycling is not a lucrative business. The center exists because of the City of Sedona’s support and the generosity of donors. People assume their “donated trash” instantly equates to a profit. “The more volume you have, the higher your labor costs, the higher your repairs and maintenance, the higher your fuel and freight, and everything. As volume goes up, the expenses go up,” Ventura says. Meanwhile, revenue still depends on the market. While glass prices have remained remarkably stable—$15 per ton—the demand for recycled plastic depends on oil prices.
“Plastic gets ground up and made into fleece clothing, carpeting, some of it gets made into vinyl floors and Trex lumber. People making new stuff would prefer to use new petroleum products. Ours is recycled feedstock. If the price of oil goes way up, the virgin feedstock gets expensive and the recycled feedstock becomes more desirable, and so the price we get goes up a little bit,” Copp says. “Cardboard is about $45 per ton,” Copp says. “Paper is about $35 per ton. I’ve seen cardboard go as high as $220 per ton. All of these things … They go up and down based on the national or worldwide market, which we have no control over.” Copp would know. He became involved with the organization in the early 1990s when it was a grassroots meet-up in the parking lot where Whole Foods is now.
IT JUST KEEPS COMING
Sedona Recycles has a very small yard. “Stuff comes in, it has to go out. We can’t store anything for a long time, plus when things sit out in the sun, they degrade,” Copp says. That was a major reason the board leveraged its reserves and purchased the new baler. “If we’re dead in the water for even one day, the bins overflow, the site overflows, we can’t process anything or pick anything up,” Ventura says.
Though the entrance to the yard can be closed off, the bins Ventura refers to sit just outside of the facility and are freely accessible to the public at all hours.
The organization also picks up material from commercial accounts that pay a small hauling fee. T he reality of the nonstop nature of the work was underscored by the constant hum of machinery and the periodic cacophony of glass breaking. “Our economic system is designed around producing as much as you can, consuming as much as you can, making as much money as you can, and not thinking about the long-term sustainability of what you’re doing,” says Copp shortly before excusing himself so he could get back to the baler.
I watched as an assortment of broken-down cardboard ascended into the brand-new machine and became a wire-wrapped rectangle destined for a mill somewhere in North America. As I watched, I thought about the number of pizza boxes I’ve tossed into a plastic container marked with chasing arrows. Batteries excluded, Sedona Recycles offers its services to the community for free.
Learn more about the facility and support their work at sedonarecycles.org.
