EL PASO — Despite spending millions of taxpayer dollars and organizing numerous awareness campaigns, this city is failing to run a successful recycling program.

Only 30 percent of paper, plastic, and cardboard that arrives at the Friedman recycling plant in east El Paso is actually recyclable, according to Ismael Barrera, manager of the Friedman Recycling Plant. This means that only about a third of all trash slated for recycling is actually being reused.

70 percent of what is recycled at El Paso homes ends up in landfills. (Audrey Russell/Nineteen Underground)

“The rest is sent to landfills,” Barrera said this week, speaking over the noise of diesel trucks and brushing away flies from his face at the company site on Wren Avenue. Barrera blames improper recycling habits and contamination from unrecyclable goods for the low percentage.

Barrerra pointed out that pizza boxes and plastic bottles with the wrong numbers in the recycling symbols account for some of the contamination that takes away from the amount of recyclables the city actually produces.

The only item being shipped out from the Friedman plant, El Paso’s primary facility, for recycling and generating a profit for the city are newspapers, Barrera said.  He added that the rest of the trash, primarily plastic items, is sent back to area landfills and takes up space there.

David Almonte, Director of the City of El Paso Office of Management and Budget, calculates that the city spends between $4 million to $6 million each year on its recycling program. “Drop it in the Blue,” generated an estimated total of $8 million to $12 million in expenditures since the program began, he said.

The city has also tried to promote the recycling program by paying for numerous commercials and various media advertisements to educate the community on what can and cannot be recycled. Residents still place improper materials in recycling bins despite the city “Drop it in the Blue” program’s efforts.
Even El Paso citizens who are aware of the recycling campaigns still do not know what is actually done once they drop their magazines, cereal boxes, and plastic bottles into their bins and roll them to the curb.

In an informal survey of students and faculty and the UTEP campus this week, a majority admitted to not knowing what happens after they drop items in the bins. Some simply ended the question with, “It is reused.”

“They take them (recyclables) to be broken down and reused,” UTEP student Israel Hall said, after asked about what happens after an item is recycled. When pressed if he knew more information about the process he replied, “I don’t know where they take them, but I have an idea that they use a filtering process with plastic bottles and paper and such. I’m sure every item takes different levels of work to recycle. But the processes behind the scenes are still a mystery to me.”

El Paso’s local recycling companies receive thousands of pounds of material to be recycled every day. But it is now up to our community to realize our program is spending millions on a program that is not productive and has many faults. Be smart and think twice before you “Drop it in the Blue.”

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