BILLINGS — Billings residents recycle about 42,000 tons of cardboard every year, but the price of recycling has climbed higher than the cost of simply burying the trash — and only a fraction of households were actually setting out their cardboard for collection.
On Monday, Billings City Council voted to end the city's curbside cardboard recycling program.
Watch city officials talk about the cardboard recycle program:
John Brown faced the choice firsthand on Wednesday. After receiving a large furniture delivery, he had to decide whether to break down all the boxes or send them to the landfill.
"We just got a bunch of new furniture," Brown said Wednesday.
He chose the landfill, and he is not alone.
"Only about 10 percent of the people are doing it, about 4,000 houses," Billings City Council member Mike Boyett said.
The low participation rate was one factor driving the council's decision. The other was cost.
"The amount of money we spend — over about $319,000, give or take — is what we're spending to pick up this cardboard," Boyett said.
Contamination also undermined the program's effectiveness.
"People would throw the wrong kind of cardboard in. They'd throw cardboard that had plastic laminated on it, pizza stains," Boyett said.
Cardboard currently makes up 12% of what goes into the city's landfill. Solid Waste Superintendent Bret Moore described the labor-intensive process behind collecting that material.
"What we do with the cardboard recycling is our employees will use their rear load vehicle, will go house to house and pick up the cardboard that's been left out," Moore said. "We will package it up, sort it, make sure everything's the way that the local company wants it, and then we'll transport it down to them."
By ending the program, the city can reassign an equipment operator to a new route, eliminate one job, and sell six trucks.
"It's a perfect storm not to recycle cardboard. That's very simple," Boyett said.
So what should residents do with their cardboard now? City officials say the answer is straightforward.
"Break down that cardboard so that it will fit nicely in the black bins and they can still fit their typical household waste in there as well," Moore said. "And then if they continue to do that, there should be no issues or disruptions to their regular collections."
For Brown, the end of the program actually simplifies things.
"I mean, time-wise and having to travel out here," Brown said.
