Every other week, drivers for Douglas Disposal headed up the hill with recycled materials from the Carson Valley. Processors at South Tahoe Refuse meticulously sorted everything so Douglas Disposal could get a solid count on what types of materials it collected during the pilot program.

“It was very specific,” Lear says. “We slowed everything down so we could get good numbers on what kinds of materials we had.”

The numbers, by volume:

Paper products – 50 percent

Glass – 22 percent

Plastics – 11 percent

Aluminum – 2 percent

Revenue from the 78,440 pounds of material collected accounted for just 22 percent of the cost to run the six-month program, says Terry Trease, controller for Douglas Disposal. And though it was a marginal amount of the total volume collected, aluminum accounted for 40 percent of all revenue generated from the recycled materials. Paper was close to a wash, Lear adds.

“There’s a perception that these materials are highly valuable, and that the recycling program should pay for itself from the revenue generated,” Lear says.

Douglas Disposal services roughly 9,000 customers in unincorporated areas of the Carson Valley. Customers currently take their recycled materials to four collection points throughout the Valley or to the transfer station itself; however, the collection points don’t accept paper products. And since paper was the largest material collected through the pilot program, there’s a clear need to be addressed.

Curbside or single-stream recycling is mandated in Nevada cities with 100,000 residents or more – that means Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas and Reno are the only cities required to have the containers with the blue lids. Enacting a county-wide curbside recycling program may prove to be difficult on several levels.

Cost is the primary issue — and there aren’t any state funds available to help offset curbside recycling costs. California’s “Bottle Bill,” for instance, charges consumers $.05 to $.10 cents per bottle at the cash register. As a result, more than 18.2 billion containers — one of every five beverage containers recycled in the U.S. — are recycled in California each year.

“There is not a state subsidy or any funds to help support these programs, particularly in rural areas,” Lear says.

Trease says a county-wide curbside recycling program for Douglas Disposal customers would require at least two additional trucks and drivers, as well as four workmen to sort recycled materials. That would be a 17 percent increase in overall staff size for Douglas Disposal.

It would also require expansion to the county transfer station — and a bump in rates for customers. The county controls the rate the private trash collection company can charge its customers, he notes.

“From a business perspective, are you going to make enough money to run the program?” Trease says. “Everyone would agree we want to keep (recyclable) material out of the landfill. It becomes a matter of how much people are willing to pay to keep that material out of the landfill.

“Everyone wants to see as much recycling as possible, but given that we already have the separation boxes already available, one option might be to do an expansion of the separation boxes,” he adds. “There are some additional sites that have been discussed to make it more convenient for customers.”

Douglas Disposal will present its finding from the pilot program to the county in October.