Today I was dropping off my recyclables at the dumpsters next to Pocatello City Hall, when a city employee told me I was wasting my time dropping off the glass and styrofoam. He said the glass and styrofoam dumpster went straight to the landfill.

This is not the first time I’ve heard this. Many years ago the folks at the local Pacific Steel & Recycling told me the same thing. Well, I’ve had lots of arguments over the years with residents (and even my kids argued with some of their grade school teachers) who believe that you can recycle glass and styrofoam locally. After the City of Pocatello labeled a small dumpster for glass and styrofoam I thought, maybe I was wrong. Nope, the city employee confirmed that the glass and styrofoam is not recycled. His reason was the same reason Pacific Steel & Recycling gave me years ago; no local south eastern Idaho glass or styrofoam recyclers/manufacturers, and it is too expensive to ship out of the area. It’s just thrown in the local landfill.

I decided to double check this, and sure enough, looking at the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality website (www.deq.idaho.gov), there are no glass or styrofoam recyclers in south eastern Idaho. The nearest Eastern Idaho recycler taking glass is in the City of Driggs, in Teton County, which is about 125 miles northwest of where I live. There are glass recyclers in North Central Idaho, Central Idaho, Western Idaho, Southern Idaho and Northern Idaho, but not in the south eastern part of Eastern Idaho (and only the one in all of Eastern Idaho). Most recycled glass, in the areas of Idaho that do recycle it, end up being used in road projects.

The DEQ website lists Adams County (on the west side of Idaho) as a styrofoam recycler, but, when I checked their web site I couldn’t find any mention of styrofoam recycling (www.co.adams.id.us). It looks like there’s no styrofoam recycling anywhere in Idaho.

So why did the City of Pocatello label a recycling dumpster for glass and styrofoam? The city employee said they got tired of people throwing glass and styrofoam into the dumpsters labeled for cardboard, plastic or aluminum & tin (even though there’s numerous signage asking people not to). So they simply grabbed a small dumpster and labeled it for glass and styrofoam, and haul it to the dump when it’s full.