The Flathead County Solid Waste District is consolidating its recycling program and will phase out recycling bins at four green-box collection sites starting Jan. 1.

Blue recycling bins will remain at the Columbia Falls, Creston, Somers and county landfill waste collection sites. Recycling won’t be an option any longer at the Ashley Lake, Bigfork, Coram or Lakeside green-box sites.

However, Bigfork will have its recycling containers re-installed once a new green-box site is completed by next fall, according to Flathead County Public Works Director Dave Prunty.

“We anticipate the exact same thing in Lakeside, but it will be a couple of years out because we’re working through the Montana Department of Transportation to lease more land,” he said.

Both Bigfork and Lakeside green-box sites had been slated for consolidation, but after strong community opposition to the planned closures, the county agreed to work toward new and improved sites in both communities.

The Solid Waste Board approved a recycling contract with Evergreen Disposal/Valley Recycling at its meeting on Tuesday. Prunty said the board earlier had attempted to negotiate a contract with North Valley Refuse but couldn’t come to an agreement because the company wanted recyclables specifically separated.

In the contract with Valley Recycling, two blue, 30-yard recycling bins will be placed at each of the four recycling locations. One bin will be designated for No. 1 and No. 2 plastics plus aluminum and steel cans. A second bin will contain all paper products, from newspaper to office paper to cardboard.

The problem with separating plastic, cans, cardboard and paper in the past, Prunty said, is that some of the compartments of the blue bins fill faster than others, forcing the county to haul recycling loads more often.

“We were hauling a lot of air because the bins weren’t full,” he said.

Each recycling site will have its own cardboard compactor. The Columbia Falls collection site has had a compactor for some time. About $76,000 was spent to buy compactors for the other three sites at the landfill, Creston and Somers.

The county is paring down the number of recycling sites because of the cost. Since 1998 the program has cost over $400,000.

At the Columbia Falls green-box site where cardboard already is compacted, the hauling cost is $30 to $40 per ton for recyclables. At the other rural sites it costs up to $250 per ton, Prunty said.

Earlier this year the county gave up its contract for blue-bin recycling at Super 1 Foods and Albertsons grocery stores in Kalispell, although Valley Recycling has kept the recycling bins at those locations.

Mayre Flowers, director of the collaborative WasteNot Project, said although there will be fewer drop-off sites for recycling, there will be bigger savings that will help retain the county’s program.

“For Flathead County the bottom line is that recycling will almost always cost more than simply burying this material at the landfill, given the costs for collecting, processing and shipping recycling materials out of state to centers that can turn these material into new products,” Flowers said.

Throwing away materials that could be recycled is not free, Flowers pointed out.

“Every year in Flathead County, through our taxes, we spend more than $8 million to throw stuff away,” she pointed out. “When county residents choose to recycle, they help ensure that materials with a market value that makes them worth recycling do not end up in the landfill.”

The cost to throw away a ton of garbage at the county Landfill is $30.50. In contrast, the value of a ton of recyclable plastics was $480 at May 2014 market rates. That’s up considerably from 2013 when plastic was worth $240 to $280 per ton.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.