Milwaukee Could Take Years to Build New Recycling Facility

While the City of Milwaukee continues to hunt for a replacement site for its fire-damaged recycling facility, it must also grapple with changing recycling patterns. Milwaukee is poised to spend almost a half million dollars studying a new recycling center site, while also continuing to evaluate how a return to in-office work and a shift to every-other-week curbside pickup affects recycling trends.

The total amount of material recycled in Milwaukee fell by 511 tons in 2022 versus 2021. But the total volume, 25,968 tons, is still up 1.3% versus the five-year average of 2017-2021 and up 6.3% versus 2019. That’s according to an annual recycling report from the Department of Public Works (DPW).

“A lot of the trends are fairly consistent for what we’re seeing across the nation, too, in terms of more people returning to the office. 2022 was a year of seeing that all come back,” said Laura Stevens, DPW resource recovery manager, to the Public Works Committee on Sept. 27. “We’re kind of going back to 2019 and seeing a lot of consistency there.” Office-based recycling isn’t documented in the city’s figures because non-residential properties are serviced by private providers.

In June 2021, Milwaukee began picking up recycling every other week citywide. The move, backed by a $1.1 million grant, increased the frequency from once every three weeks and also eliminated a quirk where one area of the city had smaller bins and weekly pickups.

“When you look at 2019, pre-pandemic, that program is proving successful,” said Stevens. “Recycling tonnage went up by 6.3% and the pounds per household went up by 4.1%.”

But the elephant in the room, or the fire-damaged pile of metal in the Menomonee Valley, must still be dealt with.

Recycling Center

On May 31, a significant fire damaged the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in the Menomonee Valley and rendered it inoperable. The decades-old waterfront facility was renovated in 2015 to serve as a shared single-stream facility with Waukesha County. But the number of fires has increased in recent years, driven in large part by improper disposal of lithium-ion batteries common in modern electronic devices and propane tanks.

The MRF has remained offline since the fire.

“The curbside services continue as normal, but it’s going to take us a little while to figure out the long-term,” said sanitation services manager Rick Meyers to the committee. He said DPW is working with the Department of City Development and the Department of Administration to study other sites. “We don’t know where that would be and what that would cost.”

Mayor Cavalier Johnson‘s 2024 budget proposal includes $456,174 for repairs or a study of a new location. “We are still at the stage that the full scope of the damage is being financially determined,” said DPW finance and administration manager Chuck Schumacher to the Capital Improvements Committee on Oct. 16. “It’s an emergency fund.”

“You’re looking at real estate acquisition, if possible, inside the city or outside the city,” said DPW Commissioner Jerrel Kruschke. “We’re looking at a five, 10, 20-year plan here.”

“That’s pretty unspecific and pretty vague to me. That’s certainly a candidate for removal,” said Alderman Robert Bauman at the meeting, referring to the funding for study of a new location. He suggested other city programs, like the housing infrastructure preservation fund, could more readily use the funding.

In September, Bauman also warned DPW officials that relocating the MRF within the city could prove to be a challenge.

“We are sensitive to knowing that there may be other interests for the valley long term,” said Meyers at the earlier committee meeting. Moving the facility would free up 8.8 acres of waterfront land for development and is also expected to improve the value of nearby properties. Much of the valley has been substantially redeveloped from its primary use as a railroad yard when the recycling facility was first constructed.

“I would also be sensitive to putting it somewhere else, because there may be 15 objections from aldermanic offices based on neighborhood input of putting what will be perceived as a ‘trash dump’ in any other aldermanic district,” said Bauman.

“Right now, we have no other site. We have nothing else,” said Meyers. “We know the easy thing would be redevelop here, rebuild, but we are just trying to be thoughtful about that and make sure we are responsive to concerns about what the alternatives may be.”

In the meantime, citizens won’t notice a change in their recycling, but the process is certainly different and more costly once the materials enter the truck.

Recycling trucks now dump their loads at a DPW facility near S. 35th St. and W. Lincoln Ave., where it is loaded into larger semitrailers and shipped to regional facilities in Madison, Appleton and the Town of Norway, just southwest of Milwaukee County. “Our insurance coverage is going to cover the difference,” said Meyers of the increased cost, while noting there is a $5 million cap. He said he expected the funding to last approximately two years. “We are working through all of that with the City Attorney’s Office and also diligently working with our partners in Waukesha County as well.”

The “emergency fund” will be reviewed as part of the Common Council’s budget adoption process in the next two weeks.

The Cost of Recycling

It remains financially prudent for the city to recycle.

The report says the city derived a $1.49 million net benefit in 2022 from its recycling operation. That includes the sale revenue from the sale of materials, $1.77 million, and avoided landfill costs, $1.22 million, less the cost to process the recycling, $1.51 million. The report notes that material prices fell later in 2022, reducing the net benefit from 2021’s $1.7 million mark.

In 2024, the city expects to receive a $2.3 million state grant, an annual award, to offset the cost of administering and picking up recycling.

Plastic Bags

There is one issue the city is no closer to handling in-house: single-use plastic bags. “While I have you, how are we doing on plastic recycling?” asked Bauman of the bags, an issue he’s pushed for improvement on for years.

Meyers said DPW encourages those bags to be returned to retailers. “They do need to be cleaned, dried, source separated, brought back through those channels versus curbside,” said Meyers.

But Bauman said he believed there was equipment that could handle filtering out the bags from curbside recycling now. Meyers said there was, but it isn’t working as well as collecting the bags separately. “Largely, they have difficulty marketing the material because it is too dirty,” said the sanitation manager.

But Bauman pushed for more work to be done on the issue.

“It is in our Climate and Equity Plan, you know? That thing that we passed that is now sitting on the shelf getting dust after a mere two months,” said the alderman.

Even if someone doesn’t want to haul their Kroger bags back to Pick ‘n Save, there is one thing they can do to make sure they’re not making the problem worse: never toss the plastic bags in the recycling bin. The bags jam machinery at recycling centers, causing facility downtime and reducing recycling yields.