THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 27, 1996 TAG: 9606270376
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: 68 lines
The regional trash authority endorsed changes Wednesday in its curbside recycling, a program that Virginia Beach has sharply criticized in the past and will withdraw from next week.
The changes come in the form of a new contract with Tidewater Fibre Corp., a Chesapeake firm that will assume a greater role in sorting and selling the tons of recycled goods collected by the Southeastern Public Service Authority each year.
The contract is designed to speed collections and lower overall costs for a program that hasn't made money since its inception in 1989, said Joe Thomas, SPSA's recycling director.
While Virginia Beach applauds the contract as a good first step, it was not compelling enough to keep the resort city from quitting SPSA's curbside program as planned, effective July 1, said Mayor Meyera Oberndorf.
Virginia Beach is pulling out after seven years because of mounting costs and a perceived slow pace of improvements. The city will instead expand a do-it-yourself drop-off recycling program, and is studying its own curbside system.
Under the terms of the 10-year contract, which still must be formally approved next month, SPSA's crews would continue to collect the same variety of materials every other week from the distinctive blue bins spread across South Hampton Roads.
And a 50-cent-per-home recycling fee would remain in place for SPSA's customers in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Chesapeake, Franklin and Southampton and Isle of Wight counties.
The big differences - speedier collections and lower overall costs - both stem from a new ``commingling'' system adopted in partnership with Tidewater Fibre over the last several months, SPSA executives said.
SPSA crews no longer would have to spend time separating materials at the curb. Instead, they would throw newspapers into one compartment of the truck and toss the rest into another stall.
This jumble of glass, cans, metals, plastics and paper would then be taken to a new sorting center, operated on a trial basis by Tidewater Fibre since late April. There, workers would separate the goods by hand and later sell them to private buyers.
Thomas said the commingling system would save the authority 20 percent in operational costs, or about $200,000 a year, according to estimates.
In exchange, Tidewater Fibre would keep most of the profits from sales, although SPSA still would receive a 25 percent share.
The marketplace for recycled materials is notoriously erratic; in some cases, trash agencies have been known to actually pay dealers to get rid of newsprint and glass.
The contract does away with such uncertainty, Thomas stressed, by guaranteeing SPSA a percentage of the profits. It also pledges that SPSA will never have to pay Tidewater Fibre to take goods off its hands.
``We get less revenue from the sales of our products, but the savings we net on the operational side far exceeds that amount,'' Thomas said.
The only criticism of the contract came from board members who felt they were not given enough time to consider its details.
A subcommittee meeting was scheduled before a final board vote next month.
SPSA has been planning since 1989 to adopt a commingling system.
The authority borrowed nearly $4 million in 1993 to build its own sorting center, but nearly $3.5 million remains in the bank, Thomas said.
The authority's effort was delayed by calls for a study of private-sector options, which it now is endorsing. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MORT FRYMAN/The Virginian-Pilot
Under an SPSA proposal, Tidewater Fibre Corp. workers would sort
recyclables. Crews now separate the materials curbside. by CNB