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SALT LAKE COUNTY -- There's trouble in the trash industry. A steep decline in commodity prices is creating sharp losses for recycling companies and for Salt Lake County.
Companies are essentially gritting their teeth, hoping to swim through a sea of red ink to a better future. No one really knows how soon recycling could make a comeback.
Trash just isn't worth what it used to be. Prices on recyclables began sliding a year ago, before most of us knew there was an economic crisis.
Lance Allen, with Waste Management of Utah, said, "The material started to decline in price until probably about October, and then it just dropped off the cliff."
A slump in demand pulled prices down, hard. "Huge, we dropped about 70 percent," Allen said.
Waste cardboard has lost some of its value because people have stopped buying things packaged in cardboard.
"We saw it come back a little bit in February," said Larry Gibson with Rocky Mountain Recycling. "We saw some of the commodities come up in price. In March, they didn't go down, so that's a good sign."
Optimism is the only thing keeping recycling companies going because they're not making money. Allen explained, "It costs us more money to process the material than the amount you get paid." His company even started charging corporate customers, instead of paying them, for used cardboard.
Salt Lake County's recycling program could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue. One recycling company dropped out; two others renegotiated contracts that paid the county up to $50 a ton for recyclables.
Salt Lake County Sanitation Director Pam Roberts said, "Right now, it is down and we're receiving $10 a ton."
But the two companies aren't giving up. One is upgrading to higher volume machines, betting on a future turnaround. Gibbons explains, "It goes up and down all the time. We plan on it. We go around and work around that."
"If I said I wasn't worried, I wouldn't be honest," Roberts said. "But I'm also very confident in our providers and our vendors, and they're telling me they still want it to come to them."
The county still generates excess revenue with its popular recycling program, and officials hope that will continue into the future. But that's the trouble. No one has a crystal ball.
E-mail: hollenhorst@ksl.com
