Wal-Mart has notified the city of Bryan it needs the parking lot space at its Briarcrest store where the city has its recycling center.
That led the city council into a discussion this week about the future of recycling programs, and asking staff to review several options.
Public works director Jayson Barfknecht says the cost of the recycling center is about $450,000 dollars a year.
That’s compared with $1.1 million if the city operated a curbside recycling program. That would amount to an additional monthly charge of about $3.70 to all households.
Dr. Barfknecht said if the city subsidized a private company to provide curbside recycling to those who requested it, the cost would be $50,000.
And the cost of no recycling and trucking that waste to the landfill would be $80,000 a year.
Environmental services director Eric Zaragoza says out of 1,000 thousand people who took took a survey, most of those who took the survey online favored curbside recycling, while those surveyed at the recycling center were equally divided between keeping the center and curbside service.
Zaragoza says labor is the largest cost in operating the recycling center, which includes five city employees and four or five disabled people from the Junction 505 organization.
Zaragoza says he’s in contact with Wal Mart on a weekly basis about where the store will move the recycling center.
About 35 percent of those using the recycling center don’t live in Bryan.
And what is collected each year at the recycling center saves about two days worth of materials going into the landfill.
