The Venango County Economic Development Authority was updated on the county’s recycling center at the panel’s monthly meeting Tuesday.
Jason Ruggiero, director of the Venango County Regional Planning Commission, said ECSR, the company the county contracted with to collect household hazardous waste and electronics, has gone out of business, and another vendor hasn’t been found.
“Be patient with Erik (Johnson, the county’s recycling coordinator),” Ruggiero said. “Obviously, the household hazardous waste collection was a huge part of the service provided to residents by the recycling center, and Erik is looking for other vendors,” Ruggiero added.
The recycling center is still taking cardboard, bottles, and cans but no household hazardous waste or electronics, Ruggiero said.
“The exact location of your facility will really depend on if you can get service,” Ruggiero said. He explained that the route haulers must take to get to a recycling center to collect material has to still be profitable for them and if a location is too remote it may not be worth their time to collect the material.
He said there is a market for cardboard and cans but “the logistics of the route really matter” and currently there is not much of a market to recycle glass.
Ruggiero said glass isn’t currently being recycled at all but is instead being chipped and used as landfill cover.
“There is a group in Erie that thinks they have found a solution for glass, but there are storage problems for us and route problems for them,” Ruggiero said.
