06/24/2025
We received a question from Goldie Crites, "Why doesn't Fredericktown have a Recycling Center?" I don't know the current situation, but I suspect the answer is financial.
Here's some background that will give you an idea.
When the original push for recycling was made across the country, big cities were changing from sorted material collection to "single stream" where all recyclables were lumped together. Before the US had many processing plants that turned our recyclables into usable products, much of the recyclables collected were sold to China. That turned into a disaster. The sorting "system" became small coastal or riverbank Chinese villages where the poorest of the poor lived on trash heaps, sorting through the mess to find items that hadn't been ruined by being mixed together with everything else collected. There was no infrastructure available to them to dispose of the actual trash. So, they used the only thing available - dumping it into the nearby water system. Tons of debris wound up in the ocean as a result.
That is - until an enterprising Chinese filmmaker made a documentary of the whole awful process and the "powers that be" in Chinese leadership lost a lot of "face" as a result. China stopped buying the world's unsorted recyclables and would only take some of those higher value items ( #1 and #2 plastics) that could be easily sampled to make sure the shipments weren't contaminated.
Prices of recyclables dropped like a stone. Many recycling centers and even lot of brokers who were buying recyclables folded as the new prices for materials were too low to cover expenses - rent, utilities, and payroll. Fredericktown was one of those casualties.
Since then, the US has built many more recycling processing plants, but they're scattered around the country. That means what items are accepted at a recycling center can vary a lot from one area to another. Examples: We can't accept glass or plastics #3-7. Also, some recycling centers can't accept bottle lids, whereas others are just fine with the lids. Also, many city or county recycling centers are considered part of their local trash pickup program. People pay for that service. Whereas it is totally free for anyone to drop off materials at Bollinger County's Recycling Center.
Finally, unlike most other recycling centers that are part of a local government like a city or a county, Bollinger County's recycling center is part of a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) non-profit that is supported by several major grants, (MO Department of Natural Resouces, MERS/Goodwill for a part-time employee, Modern Woodmen for matching our annual fundraisers, and recently Vesper Scopus Energy), donations from our local businesses and community members, and a LOT of volunteer hours and miles driven. So, we do not pay an employee. We can use the old livestock sale barn that was donated to the county rent-free and utility-free. We have dedicated Board members, many of whom have given of themselves since the organization started in 2008!
We still sort materials instead of following the larger cities' "single stream" system. We have the reputation of having quality, non-contaminated materials. So, even though we have a relatively low volume, we are able to sell to a broker in Illinois and get a little from selling the recyclables collected. (Though recently some of the materials like junk mail had a negative value!)
Without all the wonderful support our operation wouldn't exist. If the City of Fredericktown can't afford to provide a recycling center through fees and taxes, it would take a major effort to make it happen.
