Horry County SWA recycling program struggling to break even with Charleston County

Horry County’s recycling program is still trying to break even.

Any notions of the $1 million windfall officials had projected disappeared weeks ago. At this point, Solid Waste Authority officials hope to simply return to the black.

“We are continuing to move in the right direction,” said Jan Bitting, the SWA’s finance director. “We are going to continue to work that way. We are going to continue to watch things and monitor everything that we can.”

The SWA manages the county’s waste and recycling programs. Last summer, agency leaders signed a contract to process Charleston County’s bottles, cans, cardboard and other recyclables at the authority’s facility on S.C. 90. The recycling center separates and bales the items and sells them to places that convert the recyclables into useable material, such as carpet made from old soda bottles.

Initially, authority leaders touted the financial benefits of the deal, saying the local facility could receive 72,000 tons of Charleston County recyclables throughout the next two years, netting more than $1 million.

But commodity prices never reached the SWA’s estimates, the agency saw an influx of waterlogged materials from October’s flood and the facility had some additional maintenance costs.

Within two months, the program saw a deficit of more than $230,000.

Since then, however, SWA leaders have nearly climbed out of the hole. The deficit is now about $7,000 and the agency has made some changes to reduce expenses, including limiting the use of temporary workers.

“If the material’s not on the floor, we send the folks home,” said Danny Knight, the SWA’s executive director.

The SWA also renegotiated the recycling contract so Charleston County would pay to ship its recyclables to Horry.

Knight said the quality of the materials coming from Charleston has also improved, meaning more of those items can be processed and sold.

“It’s so much better than it was when we started,” he said. “I don’t see how there’s a water hose left in Charleston County with how many we’ve got through the [recycling center]. And they just wrap and wrap and wrap and tie up everything.”

The one area where the SWA has struggled is with commodity prices. Those have leveled off with no sign of increasing.

“There’s not much we can do about the market,” Knight said.

Although the Charleston County deal has not yielded the anticipated results, SWA leaders hope the arrangement will at least keep the SWA from losing any money.

Officials maintain the agency would be in worse shape without the contract. The deal, they said, supports the recycling program, which saves landfill space.

“That’s really the bottom line,” said Horry County Councilman Johnny Vaught, who chairs the council’s Infrastructure and Regulation Committee. “To stretch our landfill life as much we can.”

This story was originally published February 24, 2016 at 6:56 PM with the headline "Horry County SWA recycling program struggling to break even with Charleston County."