Tucson may temporarily stop recycling glass, newspapers

PHOENIX — A southern Arizona city may temporarily stop taking its residents’ glass bottles and newspapers due to sharply escalating financial losses in the recycling program.

According to the Arizona Daily Star, officials in Tucson are considering taking the recycling to landfills until markets recover nationally — or globally.

City officials are also weighing whether to scale back recycling collections from weekly to twice monthly or raise monthly recycling fees charged to homeowners by 30 cents, to 75 cents.

The markets for glass bottles and newspapers collapsed in the past 18 months.

That is due to a Chinese crackdown on recyclable imports and continued declines in glass and paper recycling industries in the U.S.

According to the newspaper, Tucson’s expected recycling-program loss for fiscal year 2018-19 is $3.3 million.

That’s six times what the city’s Environmental Services Department predicted last summer.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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