Some Mustang residents may soon be digging through their garbage.
Mustang City Council members Tuesday agreed to move forward on developing a contract with the city trash hauler, the Oklahoma Environmental Management Authority, to provide a voluntary curbside recycling program. City staff is now expected to hammer out details of the contract and present it to the Council at its next meeting on Sept. 1.
Two curbside recycling programs were proposed to the Council, including a voluntary program requiring 500 homes to participate before it could start. Those participating will pay an additional $5.50 each per month on top of their current trash bill. The second option was a mandatory program for all residents at a cost of $2.50 per home. The voluntary program was the only one to gain the interest of Council members with several saying they did not believe it was fair to force the program on residents and increase their utility bills. An increase in the trash rate would be the second this year for residents.
In May, Council members raised trash rates effective July 1 as the city began operating under a new five-year interlocal agreement with the OEMA to provide trash service. Under the previous waste hauling agreement, a resident using one residential trash cart paid $13.89 per month. Under the rate increase, the same resident now pays $15.97 per month. Commercial trash clients saw a 10-percent increase over previous rates.
Mustang resident Suzanne Mejia said she is ready to open up her pocketbook and put her name on the list of the 500 who will take part in the recycling program.
“I am the new face of this town,” Mejia said. “I have been living here in Mustang now for three years. I'm from Florida. My neighbors came from California. They're coming from all over the country. They are coming to live here. “
Mejia said her family loves Mustang, but she misses the curbside recycling program that was offered in her former community. Currently, Mustang's only recycling effort is led by Mustang Recycles, a volunteer organization which staffs a recycling center at the city's public works yard on SW 59th from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturdays. The effort is subsidized by taxpayers.
Mustang Recycles founder Brian Figgins has said he doesn't think the city will have trouble finding families willing to help start the program.
Figgins said traffic at the recycling center is growing. When they started in October 2006, Mustang Recycles attracted 34 customers on its opening day. On a recent weekend, he said 157 customers used the facility. On April 4, Figgins said 204 people used the facility in two hours — a record for the recycling center.
“I need it (recycling),” Mejia said. “I am one of those volunteers who is out there (current recycling center) every Saturday whether it is snowing, sleeting, raining or it's 104 degrees. I am out there.”
Some Council members voiced concern that if families agreed to take part in the program and pay the additional fee, then they needed some guarantee that the recycled materials would end up going to a recycling center and not somehow end up in the landfill. Concerns were voiced that a slumping economy may make collection of some recyclable materials financially impractical, forcing them to be buried in the county's landfill north of Union City. Recently, a slump in manufacturing because of the recession pulled plastic commodity prices down leading to declining profits in recycling also fell.
OEMA General Manager David Griesel said in cases where commodity prices fell, the authority asks for a suspension in the recycling of that material — if plastic prices fall, residents will be asked not to recycle plastic until that price climbs back to a point where OEMA can afford to collect it.
Debbie Harrison, OEMA community relations director, has said in some cases the authority has paid the plastics company to take materials from community recycling programs. Mustang and other communities have recycling drop-off locations, but none of OEMA's partners have curbside recycling programs.
Ward 4 Councilman Keith Bryan said he would like to see the OEMA give the city reports on the program to ensure the people are getting what they are paying for.
Residents who take part in the program will be given a second polycart for them to place the recycled materials in and the items will be sorted by OEMA employees.