South Strabane schedules glass recycling events
South Strabane Township supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday night to host a glass recycling event Aug. 24 for township residents.
Assistant Township Manager Patrick Conners said during Tuesday’s meeting that Michael Brothers Hauling near Baldwin will drop off three dumpsters for the event in the parking lot of the township’s public works building, 680 Floral Hill Drive, and collect them afterward for a fee of $300 per dumpster.
He said the event will be managed through the help of volunteers and the township’s public works department. The event is expected to cost the township about $1,600, Conners said.
In order to keep traffic flowing during the event, residents are asked to sort their glass ahead of time – clear, brown and green.
The supervisors also approved a Sept. 28 glass recycling event to be hosted by the Pennsylvania Resources Council. That event would be open to more than just township residents, Conners said.
He said the council would bring their own equipment and staff and run the collection from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. for a $750 charge to South Strabane Township. The event will be held in the township, but an exact location is yet to be determined.
For updates on the recycling events and other township information, Conners said residents can visit the newly created township Facebook page.
Conners said that eventually, the township would like to have a permanent glass recycling facility for residents, possibly a dumpster site managed and maintained by the Pennsylvania Resources Council, as they’ve done in other municipalities.
“The goal will be to let the professionals do it,” Conners said.
The township’s one-year recycling contract with Waste Management will soon be expiring. Currently, they are the only recycling option for residents, some of whom have publicly expressed unsatisfactory reviews of that service since Waste Management is no longer accepting glass.
“Anytime you take a huge chunk of something out – like in this case, glass – that’s going to frustrate a lot of people,” Conners said.
Waste Management also recently raised rates, adding to the residents’ frustration, according to Supervisor Bracken Burns.
“It doesn’t make sense for you to do less and charge me more,” Burns said. “I don’t know if there is another recycling vendor, and if there isn’t then they’ll have the terms. When you have a monopoly, you can do whatever you want, and that’s not a good day for the customer.”
The supervisors approved Tuesday to prepare bids for a “township-wide household waste and recycling collection contract,” something they’ve wanted to move toward. Burns said the bid wasn’t “totally motivated by the glass problem” or the raised rates from the current vendor.
He said that currently, residents are responsible for selecting and contracting for garbage pickup for their individual residences. That system has made every day trash day for the township, he said, but he hopes a collection bid will help consolidate that to one day for trash and recycling.
“The contract may result in one vendor that does everything or one doing recycling and another doing the trash,” he said.