Grant expands local recycling options

Recycling options in southern Lincoln County will soon expand since the Montana Department of Environmental Quality awarded the county a $25,000 grant to put toward recycling infrastructure.

“It’s a service we’ve been struggling for a way to provide it and this is giving us a start,” said Kathi Hooper, director of Lincoln County Department of Environmental Health.

Hooper foresees setting up a recycling trailer in Troy near the green disposal boxes on Yaak Avenue and another trailer at an undetermined spot in Libby.

The recycling program will offer residents one place to drop off paper, plastic 1 and 2, aluminum cans and steel cans.

The program probably won’t be in place until late May, Hooper said, because the county hasn’t received the money yet and the trailers take roughly six to eight weeks to arrive after they are ordered. 

Though no firm plans have been made, Kootenai Disposal in Libby will most likely take the paper and aluminum cans off of the county’s hands, Hooper said, so that the county will only have to ship plastics and steel cans to Kalispell.

“What I’m hoping to do is to be able to stockpile some of the recyclables at the landfill in Libby, then take them to Kalispell,” Hooper said, “and just piggy back on a load that’s already going over.”

The county already, for example, transports large loads of tires to Kalispell from the landfill.  

Recyclables probably won’t ever cover the cost of transportation, Hooper said, but the program will pay off in other ways, such as reducing the strain on the landfill. Hooper pointed out that the landfill in Libby doesn’t have to follow current, more stringent environmental regulations because it is grandfathered in. But when it fills, the county will have to invest to create a new space that follows current laws.

“We want to extend the life of our current footprint as long as possible,” Hooper said.

Southern Lincoln County’s program is based off of Eureka’s wildly successful recycling partnership.

“We don’t have to start from scratch,” Hooper said, “so it should be faster out of the gate for Libby.”

A nonprofit group, Recycle Eureka, had been conducting quarterly recycling drives since 2008. Last year, the group teamed up with County Commissioner Marianne Roose and Hooper to get two collection trailers and a piece of land to set them up on. The trailers arrived Jan. 1.

“The county agreed to buy those and they agreed to pay to have the material hauled whenever the trailers are full,” said Tiffin Hall, president of Recycle Eureka. “Our group has basically been monitoring the trailers and keeping the material separated correctly.”

Recycle Eureka also worked with Stein’s Grocery and the county to provide a cardboard dropoff spot. Though cardboard recycling isn’t part of the county’s plan for Libby and Troy, Kootenai Disposal already offers that service.

Hooper hopes to be able to form a more centralized recycling system. Because county crews make regular trips between Eureka and Libby, she thinks it may be more efficient to group and compress all the material in Libby and make fewer trips to Kalispell.

“I’m trying not to create a lot of travel cost which we wouldn’t be able to support,” she said.