Recycling Glass in Bentonville

Glass may be the next target for the Bentonville recycling program.

“We will find some way to address that. It’s a work in progress,” said Mayor Bob McCaslin.

City officials are putting together ideas for a new program, which will be separate from the new recycling program by Allied Waste Services.

The waste disposal company can’t glass because it is unsafe at the moment and because its trucks are not designed to handle glass, stated Jennifer Fagan, a sales manager for Allied Waste.

Recyclable products they can accept are include paper, plastic and aluminum.

“All of this stuff gets handled eventually at the recycling facility. It goes on a belt, and then people have to manually sort the items,” which is why glass can be dangerous, Fagan explained. Roll Off Service in Johnson, which processes Allied Waste’s recyclables, doesn’t accept glass either.

City officials are thinking about the Benton County Solid Waste District in Bentonville as a possible location to handle the glass recycling at multiple drop-off points in the city.

The district already maintains two drop-off points in Bentonville:

Wendy Cravens, Benton County Solid Waste District director, hopes those talks began at some point in the near future.

“I’ll be happy to do some research to make that work,” Cravens commented, noting city officials would have to identify the drop-off locations. The district doesn’t provide curbside recycling, although she added that that would be the best way to increase recycling.