Penn Forest Township officials hope to resume recycling services when they approve a new trash collection contract this fall.

Until then, the township transfer station will not be offering a recycling program. The supervisors decided to end the program in March after many years.

What is to blame? The short answer is pizza boxes. A longer answer is that plummeting demand for recycled materials has caused many haulers to accept less or no recyclable material.

Supervisor Warren Reiner said during a regular meeting last week that he met with two haulers to see if they had options to continue the program. Following those meetings, Reiner said he thinks the township should wait until the new trash contract to find a hauler.

“I would like to see the recycling work, but I can’t see it work the way that it is,” Reiner said.

Reiner said the cost to recycle is more than the cost to dump in the trash at the moment. It costs about $75 to dispose of a ton of trash and more than $90 for a ton of recyclables.

The discussion came about because the supervisors were considering buying a cardboard compactor. The purchase cost was more than $15,000.

Reiner said he didn’t want to buy the compactor if there wasn’t a use for it.

“I think we should wait until October, put a bid out for the whole contract, see if it improves, then go ahead and buy the compactor,” Reiner said.

The program ended because the supervisors didn’t think that residents could meet the township trash hauler’s new restrictions on recyclable materials.

In March, the current waste hauler, Solomon Container Service, told the township it had to change from single stream to dual stream recycling at the township recycling plant.

Reiner said he looked at other townships and saw others are dropping their recycling programs. The problem is a lack of demand for recyclables, and contamination from pizza boxes, plastic bags and other items.

As has been widely reported, many towns dropped recycling after China said they would accept less recycling than they have historically. In 2016, China accepted over 50 percent of the world’s recycled paper and plastic, according to the National Waste and Recycling Association.

Reiner said contamination has been getting worse in the recyclables at the transfer station. The only way to guarantee that Supervisor Roger Meckes said he was told by one of the waste haulers that if they did recycle with them, and a load was found to be contaminated by items such as pizza boxes, the hauler would charge the township to scoop up the refuse and haul it to the landfill.

Meanwhile, there are rumors that other haulers are collecting recyclables, then dumping them in landfills because it’s cheaper. In January, it was reported that Philadelphia is incinerating 50 percent of the recyclables it collects due to low demand.

Resident Tara Sommerfield said the township may be right to stop recycling because if they are paying a company which is improperly disposing of recyclables, there is nothing to stop that company from continuing to do so. Taking away their business may be the only way to stop the misuse, she said.

“If everybody stops their contracts and recycling stops, they’re going to want to get it back, but they’re going to need to make changes to make sure that we know that they’re doing the right things with the recycling,” she said.