Pane in the glass: Montana recycling efforts rocky

Sometimes the cost to provide a community service is enough to break even the strongest of corporate budgets.

After a five-year attempt to sustain an unsupported glass recycling program in Montana, Target is closing recycling program at all store locations in the state.

The retail giant has cited Montana’s lack of recycling infrastructure as too costly to maintain the program. February will be the last month Target will accept glass. 

“Since opening our first store in 1962, Target has invested in the health and sustainability of our communities. In 2010, we became the only retailer in the state of Montana to have a glass bottle recycling program,” Target spokeswoman Angie Thompson said in a prepared statement. “However, due to the use of our facilities beyond their original intent and the lack of infrastructure in place at a state level, we regret that we are unable to continue the program. The affected stores will continue to accept guest recycling through Feb. 28.”

Target decision to end glass recycling points to issues that have challenged Montana glass recycling efforts for decades. There are no manufacturing plants in the state that use recycled glass as a raw material and shipping the heavy, pulverized byproduct costs more than most recycling companies can afford to stay in operation. 

“There’s very little glass recycling going on in Montana because cost is extremely prohibitive,” Flathead County Public Works Director Dave Prunty said. 

The closest shipping point is in Spokane, and from there it’s shipped to bigger markets such as Seattle or Denver. 

Those who want to recycle glass locally still have an option, however. New World Recycling, at 4969 U.S. 2 near Columbia Falls has a $100,000 glass pulverizing machine and accepts drop-offs of glass bottles at no charge. Co-owners Teri Schneider and Matt O’Dea last year processed 80 tons of glass.

Schneider said as more material comes in, the more cost they’ll incur, but she’s OK with it, considering the other options.

“It’s going to cost us more, but as long as it doesn’t go in the landfill,” Schneider said. “We still have the labor of love.”

Each day, O’Dea pours bins of bottles onto the pulverizer’s conveyor belt. The glass then falls into a chamber containing 28 hammers that smash the glass and round off the edges. A tumbler separates the heavy glass and the lighter-weight labels, caps and other imperfections.

But rather than shipping the glass out of state to a manufacturer, New World sells it in sandbag-style packaging and piles it up near the highway to sell by the yard. People bring glass from as far as Browning to be recycled. After the glass has been pulverized, people come as far away as Thompson Falls to buy it for home projects, sometimes asking for solid colors such as blue, green or brown. 

The driveway leading up to New World Recycling is made up recycled glass bits, but tires and bare feet aren’t in any danger. O’Dea picked up a handful from beneath the machine and squeezed it in his fist. No blood, no scratches.

Other states such as California have mandated recycling programs, but Prunty doubts that will be imposed in Montana any time soon.

“My opinion, being born and raised in Montana, is that’s not going to happen,” he said. “Not in this state.”

Prunty, who was born in Montana but spent several years at a waste company in California, said he can speak to the urgency applied by other states. California, he said, mandated a 50 percent reduction in waste between 1990 and 2000. Cities that weren’t in compliance with the measure by 2000 were fined $10,000 a day until they reached the recycling transition to 50 percent. 

Sandra Boggs, a recycling and marketing specialist with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality also said state-mandated recycling is not likely in Montana.

“We’re a rural state, so you can’t expect a little place to mandate the same recycling that you can do here in Helena, or there in Kalispell,” she said.

Instead of a statewide mandate, Montana has goals that were set in 2009. After a failed attempt to reduce waste by 25 percent back in the 1990s, the state reset the program in 2009, setting incremental goals to reach a deeper reduction in solid waste.

Montana reached the final waste reduction goal — 22 percent — in 2015. Boggs said the goal became more attainable when the Department of Environmental Quality began making efforts to prop up recycling programs in small Montana towns such as Cut Bank and Fort Benton. Rather than approaching the issue with a wide, grab-all recycling method, smaller towns do better focusing on one material like ºcardboard, she said. 

“I think [22 percent] was a really good target for us considering that we are such a vast state,” Boggs said. “Our recycling infrastructure is young, in a sense. There are curbside companies coming to Montana; they’re the ones out there kicking butt and taking names and that’s what we needed.”

At New World Recycling, Schneider said the amount of glass intake has quadrupled each year since she and O’Dea took over the company in 2011. They’re now collecting curbside recycling, at a fee, for about 300 people across the valley. Schneider said if funding assistance was available through the state or county, she’d lobby for a full recycling center capable of processing 500 tons a year.

“More recycling, that’s the goal,” she said.

Reporter Seaborn Larson may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at slarson@dailyinterlake.com.