Green Team: You can now recycle plastic bags

By Ed Runyan

Ground will be broken for a new recyclable processing facility within 90 days.

YOUNGSTOWN — Mahoning County residents receive more than a half-million plastic shopping bags per week at their favorite stores. Now, those bags can go into the recycling bin instead of into the trash.

That reduction in the amount of solid waste going into landfills alone is remarkable, said Jim Petuch, director of the Green Team, Mahoning County’s recycling and reuse division.

But on top of that, county residents will be able to recycle the little plastic bags that newspapers are delivered in or the plastic cups, plates and cutlery used at Youngstown State University and other places for certain types of dining events.

Petuch, who has been with the county’s recycling division 26 years, says the announcement Thursday that the county’s curbside recycling program is expanding to include plastics No. 3 through No. 7 and additional types of paper is “a major milestone” for Mahoning’s recycling efforts.

The county has had curbside recycling since 1991 and recycling drop-off points since 1982.

But for a couple of years he has received phone calls from people wanting to know when the plastic bags would be recyclable.

Now that the price of oil is so high and the value of recycled plastic has risen, those and other items can be recycled. It is likely that the plastic leaving county homes will end up in China or another Asian country, perhaps as the shell of a computer that we will buy again in the United States, Petuch said.

Petuch said it is likely recycling of plastics No. 1 through No. 7 will continue here for many years to come because it will be profitable for companies to recycle the materials as long as oil remains at $70 per barrel or more. The price now exceeds $100 per barrel, he noted.

Petuch said the value of plastics is between 10 and 14 cents per pound. By comparison, the value was a negative number just a couple of years ago, meaning the county had to pay to have the material taken away.

Brent Bowker, general manager of Allied Waste, which collects the county’s trash and recyclables, said he asks customers to separate the paper goods from the plastics in their recycle bins.

But it will be easier to know which paper goods can be recycled by remembering this simple statement: “If it tears, we take it.”

Gabriel Hudock, CEO of Recycle Management of Pittsburgh, which takes the recyclable materials from Allied Waste, told county commissioners Thursday the company is about 90 days away from breaking ground on a materials recovery facility adjacent to the Allied Waste Carbon Limestone landfill in Poland.

Hudock said the facility will involve an investment of “several million dollars” and will employ about 12 people when it opens.

The 22,000-square-foot facility will allow Recycle Management to process the county’s recyclables here rather than truck them to Pittsburgh for processing as it does now.

runyan@vindy.com