City Council wrestles with recycling options as First Resources deadline nears

Sigourney, Iowa- Sigourney city officials are still undecided with how to proceed on a recycling option for the City, as a February 1 cut-off date from First Resources continues to inch closer. On December 17, Sigourney officials received a letter from First Resources, which stated that as of February 1, 2019, First Resources would no longer be able to offer recycling services for the city, in large part due to a financial loss in recycling that they could no longer continue to absorb. Since that time, the Sigourney City Council has held several committee meetings to discuss alternatives to the city recycling program. 

            At the January 16 city council meeting, Mayor Doug Glandon informed the council that they had five options to consider. The first option would be to continue the current recycling program with First Resources, however with the city paying First Resources. According to Glandon, that bill would be around $34,000 a year.

 “Just like we’re doing now, but now they want paid,” Glandon said of the proposal.

            The remaining viable options for consideration included some sort of partnering with Cox Sanitation, of North English. The first option would be for Cox Sanitation to completely take over recycling. Each household in Sigourney would be given several containers for recycling and Cox Sanitation would handle picking up all of the recyclables each week. However, Glandon note that to do this, each household would be billed $6 a month. 

            The second option involving Cox Sanitation would be for city workers to continue to pick up recyclables each week, as usual. However, after picking up all recyclables, city workers would then drive to North English and drop off the recyclables, with the city being charged a processing fee.

 “The city guys would still be doing the same as they’re doing now, only they would have to drive 20 miles one way,” Glandon said.

Glandon said the final option involving Cox Sanitation is for them to bring down a six-yard dumpster for cardboard, with City would parking a city recycling trailer next to it. Those who want to recycle would then go down to the bins and place their recyclables in there.

“Whenever the trailer gets full, one of the city guys would have to take it up to get dumped. Cox would take care of the cardboard on its own,” Glandon said. “The City guys would have nothing to do with it except monitoring it and we would probably put a security camera… to monitor it,” he added.

For more on this story, catch the January 23 edition of the News-Review.