Laconia puts glass back in the recycling bin

LACONIA — Glass is no longer trash in Laconia.

After three years, the city is once again encouraging residents to place glass bottles and jars in their recycling bins.

The city decided to take glass off the do-not-recycle list because the circumstances have changed, and so once again it makes financial sense to place glass with other recyclables for curbside pickup, such as plastic bottles, metal containers, and many paper products except for cardboard.

Laconia, like many other communities, started asking residents to place empty glass containers in the trash in the tumultuous months following the 2018 implementation of China’s scrap import restrictions.

“Even though we knew glass had the ability to be reused, the reality was that there was no market for glass in any of the New England states and that we were paying more to sort glass out of the single-stream recyclables only to have it end up in the landfill anyway,” City Manager Scott Myers said in a notice contained in the city’s Laconia Links email newsletter. “Laconia focused on ‘Glass is Trash' until better options came along."

Public Works Director Wes Anderson said the price the city is paying to dispose of recyclable materials has dropped considerably since 2018.

In November 2018 the city disposed of recyclables at a cost of $93 a ton. That cost reached its peak in March 2020 when the city paid $133.94 a ton for collected recyclable materials. Last month the cost was down to $18.28 a ton, Anderson said.

The city briefly made a profit from its recycling, earning $8.68 per ton in September of this year.

How much a community pays to dispose of recyclable materials is unpredictable because “it’s a commodity market,” and so subject to the fluctuations of supply and demand.

A further reason it now makes sense to include glass with other recyclable materials is because of a new use that’s been found for the material.

Cassella Waste Systems, the city’s trash hauler, is taking glass and grinding it down to an almost-sand-like substance to be used as a road base at its facilities, Anderson said.

“The glass is being reutilized rather than recycled,” Anderson said. “It’s being used for other purposes.”