Mason City council approves contract with new company to process and market recyclables

MASON CITY — The City Council in Mason City earlier this week approved an agreement with Absolute Waste Removal for the processing and marketing of recyclables collected by the city.

Mayor Bill Schickel says the city’s current recycling provider stopped accepting plastic and glass recycling in October of last year, and a solution needed to be found.  “We had a contract with the Mason City Recycling Center. The Mason City Recycling Center for economic reasons could no longer accept recycling. For a period of time here for several months, we’ve been actually honestly taking the recycled materials out to the landfill, and that’s not the best situation. So our team got on it. Deputy city administrator Brent Hinson along with a task force have been working on this for a while, and they came up with a solution of contracting with Absolute Waste.”

Schickel says residents will continue to place recycling out on the curb in the same way they have been.  “Our city crews will continue to pick up your trash and recyclable materials, but beginning January 1, that’s when this contract starts, we will be able to process the recycled materials again.”

Schickel says there will be some additions to what can be placed in with your recycled materials once that new contract starts.  “You could not place aerosol cans previously for recyclable materials, we now will be accepting those. Glass jars and bottles, the different colored glass jars and bottles, we previously did not accept, we’ll be able to accept those, along with all the general things like newspapers and plastic bottles, food cartons, newspapers, things along those lines.”

Absolute Waste Removal is in the process of constructing a new recycling facility near the Mason City Municipal Airport to help meet the needs of their recycling clients, which include the cities of Clear Lake and Garner.

Schickel made his comments on the “Ask the Mayor” program on AM-1300 KGLO earlier this week. You can listen back to the replay of the program Saturday morning shortly after 9 o’clock on KGLO, or you can listen on demand by heading to the “Ask the Mayor” archive at kglonews.com.