Baltimore County's Glass Hasn't Been Recycled For Years. Here's Why
BALTIMORE COUNTY, Md. (WJZ) -- Residents of Baltimore County received quite the shock a few weeks ago when they found out the glass they've been recycling was ending up in landfills.
"It started under the previous administration," said Stephen Lafferty, the county's chief sustainability officer."I think they made a financial decision to stop accepting glass,"
WJZ visited the recycling plant Tuesday. Mike Bichler, who runs the plant, said there was too much contamination.
"The paper that was in the line then co-mingles with the glass and we get a very paper-mache-type mix that's just too contaminated to process," Bichler said.
A big reason the county didn't say anything about the glass before was that they didn't want people to stop turning in glass.
"We wanted people to continue to recycle it with the hope and expectation that we'd find another way to dispose of it," Lafferty said.
All the other materials get processed and sold; 56,000 tons of it that make anywhere from three to nine million-per-year.
"I hear it all the time. Is recycling real? Is it a fraud? Do you really make any money out at it? When you come here, you see that it is for real," Bichler said
Now, residents are left wondering whether their efforts to recycle were in vain.
"It's a shame that it's being wasted," one county resident said.
To that, Lafferty said residents shouldn't give up and the county is working to find some alternatives. Officials are in talks with a number of vendors that could accept the glass from the facility
