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County recycling review: custodial training, locked dumpsters and gaps at the judicial campus
Summary
Kane County staff presented a multi-part review of in-house recycling including 'hard to recycle' streams and single-stream challenges; the committee heard that contamination fees have fallen after targeted training but that the Judicial Campus lacks adequate recycling dumpsters and compliance with the county recycling ordinance.
Claire Ryan, a county waste/recycling staff member, told the Energy and Environmental Committee on July 11 that county recycling in buildings is a mix of established diversion efforts and ongoing operational gaps.
Ryan said the county redirects electronics, batteries, toner cartridges, lamps and other hard-to-recycle materials through existing vendor programs and a county collection point, and has recently added a print-consumables collection and paint-recycling coordination. "There is no more paperwork and there is no additional checks at this point, and that's why we're bringing it to you," Ryan said when explaining the current community-solar billing analogy for other programs — in this case, explaining that some recycling credits and program flows now appear on regular vendor billing rather than as separate county payments.
On single-stream recycling (the mixed paper/plastic/metal stream collected from blue bins), Ryan described roles: building occupants must place clean recyclables in interior blue bins; custodial staff consolidate unbagged material into outdoor containers; and the county’s contracted hauler (Waste Management) collects and markets the material. Ryan explained that Waste Management may assess contamination fees when truckloads contain bagged recycling, large blocks of styrofoam, electronics or other contaminants. She told the committee contamination fees accounted for about 8% of costs since the current contract began in 2023 and said an account of January training coincided with a drop in fees.
The committee spent substantial time on the Judicial Campus, where Ryan reported almost no recycling is occurring because only one recycling dumpster remains on that campus. Ryan said the county’s own recycling ordinance requires institutional generators to recycle and that the lack of containers and space constraints at the Judicial Campus have hampered compliance. Roger Fonstock of IT and building management told the committee he will work with building management and staff to revisit placement of dumpsters and improve controls to reduce fly dumping.
Other recommended steps from staff included: an audit of campus containers and material streams, clearer signage and bin color consistency (commercial containers were replaced with yellow-lidded units this year), Spanish-language training for custodial teams, clarifying who holds padlock keys for locked containers, and exploring performance incentives or incorporating recycling tasks into custodial evaluations. Ryan said custodial training and new materials coincided with fewer contamination fees after January’s guide and training.
Why this matters: contaminated recycling increases county costs and undermines diversion goals; restoring recycling service at the Judicial Campus would bring county operations into compliance with its own ordinance and could recover recyclable materials now lost to landfill.
What’s next: staff will perform follow-up audits, work with building management and Waste Management on container placement and training, and report progress to the committee. Roger Fonstock said he will follow up with Kevin Harris and building teams to evaluate dumpster placement at the Judicial Campus.
