City expected to receive grant to add more recycling bins at businesses

Every week, three recycling bins full of discarded beer bottles and beverage containers at the Break Time convenience store on U.S. 63 are sent to Columbia’s Material Recovery Center.

After recycling, the containers can be made into any number of products, such as bins, park benches and even curtains.

To expand the number of recycling bins like those at Break Time, the Mid-Missouri Solid Waste Management District will award Columbia a $4,000 grant requiring a matching city grant of $1,333.

The money would be used to fund the purchase of recycling bins for the recovery of used beverage containers at convenience stores and a reconditioned recycling packager for the Joe Machens dealership. The project is expected to be approved by the City Council tonight, said Layli Terrill, waste minimization supervisor for the city.

There are 141 blue 60-gallon beverage recycling bins in Columbia, which are placed by the gas pumps outside convenience stores, Terrill said. Every store in this program has four to seven bins.

“We already have three recycling bins now, but we still need two more,“ said Lisa Brown, who works at Break Time.

“There are convenience stores open every day, and the current bins are not enough as needed,” said district coordinator Cindy Jolly.

Most convenience stores voluntarily participate in the program. The city’s grant will help buy 70 to 90 heavy-duty recycling bins and provide them to convenience stores that are not currently participating and replace old bins at participating stores.

“We want to encourage people to recycle and reduce solid waste through this project,” Jolly said.

According to the report, the waste management district also awarded the city $5,000 to buy a 60-inch down-stroke reconditioned baler, which is used for baling plastic, paper and cardboard for transport to a recycling facility.

It will be placed at the Joe Machens Ford dealership on Worley Street.

The facility will be used to collect old corrugated cardboard. Roughly 4,000 pounds of this cardboard is generated a week, according to a report from John Glascock, director of planning and development.

The Non-Residential/Commercial Recycling Program would like to encourage waste reduction by supplying a baler to this facility at minimal cost.

“These grants provide the Columbia citizens, visitors and businesses the opportunity to recycle and save space in our landfill,” Terrill said.