Diboll recycling continues

Piney Woods Sanitation Company will no longer take recyclable garbage from the City of Diboll to the City of Lufkin for recycling, City Manager Dennis McDuffie said last week during a city council meeting.

The company, based out of Huntington, is currently under contract to the City of Diboll for garbage pickup and has, in the past, included recycling to that service that was taken to Lufkin.

In a letter sent to McDuffie by Paul Weber of Piney Woods, the city was informed of the company's intent.

"As you are aware," Weber said in the letter, "the City of Lufkin notified all hauling companies and cities that they were no longer accepting any materiel effective July 1, 2009.

"Due to the short notice by Lufkin, our company agreed to continue the collection of recyclable materiel until July 15."

However, he said he was informed that many local residents were continuing to place recyclable materiel on the curbs for pickup as of July 22.

He then agreed to continue the pickup through July 29, but no further than that.

However, McDuffie said that after studying the contract with the company, he has informed Piney Woods that a halt to recycling pickup on Wednesdays would be a breech of the current contract.

"After I pointed this out to them," McDuffie said, "They have agreed to continue to pick up recyclables on the Wednesday schedule as usual.

"However, this will continue to be only recyclable garbage and placed in the same bags as usual. No regular garbage will be picked up that day."

He said Piney Woods officials and councilmen would talk about the current situation at the next meeting Aug. 10.

"For the time being," McDuffie said, "we will continue with the same schedule. The only change will be that the recycled garbage picked up on Wednesday will now go to the landfill instead of the City of Lufkin."

McDuffie said the low prices companies are getting for recycling is the main culprit.

"There just isn't any kind of market out there for this right now," McDuffie said. "It will pick back up one of these days and then we will be able to find somebody that wants it.

"It is quite unfortunate that it had to happen now, because people in Diboll had really begun to make an effort to recycle. Thankfully, we can continue it this way for the time being."

Lufkin informed area cities in June that it would no longer take recyclable garbage into the city because of the costs.

Recycling has been hit just like every other segment of today's economy, the city said.

Lufkin officials said it would continue to do it for local citizens only because it was just not economically sound to do anything else.

McDuffie said he would continue to work with Piney Woods in the future to see when they can restart the program and have all of the recyclable materiels used in a ecofriendly manner and not sent to the landfill.