Report: Local recycling budgets are stressed as state aid has dropped

A new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum has found that recycling services are stressing local government budgets due in part to a decline in state aid.

The report released Wednesday said state data shows operational costs for municipalities that offer recycling have grown by about 0.6 percent each year when adjusted for inflation between 2013 and 2021, according to Tyler Byrnes, senior research associate with the nonpartisan research group.

“Their operational costs are growing slowly, but the revenues available to pay for those operational costs, especially external revenues, grants from the state specifically, have stayed flat as well,” Byrnes said.

For counties, local spending grew faster at almost 5 percent each year, which the group attributed to counties charging more fees at landfills or drop-off sites.

State funding for recycling grants has remained at roughly $19 or $20 million each year since 2011. The state reduced aid from roughly $32 million for more than 1,000 municipal and county governments that provide state-mandated recycling under the 2011-2013 budget. Prior to the change, state aid covered nearly a third of local government costs, but that dropped to 15.7 percent by 2021.

The report found local governments can draw revenues from three main sources to cover recycling costs. They include local revenues like property taxes or fees, state aids and revenues from selling material that can be recycled. As state aid has remained flat, local governments must fill the gap from other sources.

“There’s costs for local residents in turn. For places that use a fee for garbage pickup, those fees may increase,” Byrnes said.

Megen Hines, environmental program coordinator for the city of Menomonie, said utility fees for recycling increased to $7.25 per quarter for single family households in recent years due to increasing labor costs due to inflation and retention of employees.

“We work hard to keep them as low as possible,” Hines said. “But with the changing labor landscape and as our (hauling) contracts and such increase, we have to increase to catch up.”

While local governments can sell recyclable material, the report highlighted that prices for such materials have been volatile. In some years, the sale of recyclables can make up almost 20 percent of recycling costs for communities and counties, according to data from the state Department of Revenue. However, those revenues fell nearly 28 percent per ton of recycled materials collected as prices and the tonnage of material dropped between 2013 and 2019.

“They’ve grown again a little bit as the market has kind of worked through some changes, but they are generally lower,” Byrnes said.

The price per ton of recycled material dropped by more than 70 percent between 2017 and 2019. Byrnes said state environmental regulators indicated that a policy change by the Chinese government played a role as the nation barred imports of some materials due to lax sorting of recyclables from the U.S. and others.

Local governments are collecting fewer tons of recycled material

Amid flat state aid and volatile prices, local governments collected around 2 percent fewer tons of recyclable material in 2022 compared to 2013. That equates to about 6,900 fewer tons or an average of about 136 pounds per resident. Local governments recycled around 400,000 tons last year.

Recycling facilities operated by private firms, counties and municipalities reported a larger drop of 9.3 percent in the tonnage of materials that were shipped to those who bought recycled materials during the same timeframe. However, the report cautioned it’s difficult to draw conclusions about changes in total statewide recycling because a number of facilities aren’t required to report such data to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Amid reduced volume of recycled materials, recycling of paper and corrugated cardboard that account for most of statewide collections dropped by 7 percent or 18,500 tons. Even so, cardboard recycling more than doubled from 53,974 to 109,651 tons during the same period.

“I personally, along with lots of people, have a lot more cardboard than I ever used to with the large popularity of ordering online, and I have way less paper,” Hines said.

The amount of cardboard recycled spiked by 59 percent between 2019 and 2021 due likely to increased online shopping during COVID-19 lockdowns. At the same time, recycling of office paper or newsprint fell by more than one-third from 208,220 to 134,089 tons during that time span as fewer households bought newspapers or paper for personal use.

Recycling of aluminum containers dropped by about 16 percent or 1,800 tons. However, recycling of glass and plastic containers both increased roughly 11 percent by 9,900 tons and 3,400 tons respectively.

Byrnes said the drop in aluminum containers could be due to societal changes of people drinking less soda and beer, as well as a growing perception that more materials are landfilled rather than recycled.

Mark Walter, business development manager for Brown County Port & Resource Recovery, said a practice known as lightweighting, which reduces packaging material, could also be a factor.

“In general, we are still recycling everything that we possibly can. We’re not throwing anything more away than we have in the past,” Walter said. “There are materials that are just weighing less and being diverted elsewhere.”

Some recycled materials are being shifted from public facilities to two new or expanded private recycling facilities. Walter said that includes Waste Management’s $39 million investment in an expanded facility in Germantown and the opening of a new facility by GFL Environmental in Mayville.

Walter, chair of the Wisconsin Council on Recycling, said changes to state funding are necessary if the state wants to continue to see less waste making its way to landfills.