- April 24, 2024
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Flagler Beach Mayor Suzie Johnston, former City Commissioner Ken Bryan and Sanitation Supervisor Rob Smith cut the ribbon on the city's new film recycling program. Photo by Sierra Williams.
Former Flagler Beach City Commissioner Ken Bryan brought props to demonstrate the amount of plastic residents go through. Flagler Beach Sanitation Supervisor Rob Smith and Mayor Suzie Johnston look on. Photo by Sierra Williams.
Flagler Beach Sanitation Supervisor Rob Smith with Mayor Suzie Johnston and former City Commissioner Ken Bryan at the ribbon cutting for the city's new film recycling program. Photo by Sierra Williams
Flagler Beach Sanitation Supervisor Rob Smith addresses Flagler Beach residents about the city's new film plastic recycling program with Mayor Suzie Johnston and former City Commissioner Ken Bryan. Photo by Sierra Williams.
The city of Flagler Beach has officially added some plastics back into its recycling work.
The city has partnered with the company NexTrex, who will pay the city for film plastics it collects and then turn the plastics into decking boards. The city held a ribbon cutting for its first recycling receptacle on April 27. Residents will be able to begin recycling on May 15.
"There's no third party there," Sanitation Supervisor Rob Smith said. "So all the revenue that this brings in will continue to help keep our garbage bill stay $10 to $15 a month less than hopefully over the bridge."
Smith said they are only starting with three receptacles for now — one at City Hall, the Flagler Beach Pier and the city’s library — but could expand in the future as need.
Residents will be able to recycle grocery and produce bags, newspaper sleeves, stretch film and pallet wrap, ice bags, cereal bags, bubble wrap, plastic shipping envelopes, dry cleaning bags, Ziploc and other resealable food storage bags and polyethylene films labeled 2 and 4.
The plastic must be clean and dry, according to the NexTrex informational brochure handed out at the ribbon cutting. Residents will not be able to recycle items like frozen food bags, pre-washed salad mix bags, laminated film, cheese bags or degradable bags.
"The most important part of this is that we all work together and do the right thing because the contamination kills the whole program," Smith said.
He said that it is important people do not contaminate the receptacles with non-recyclable items because then all the properly recycled items will need to be thrown out. It is the same with the city's other recycling items, though Smith and his team work hard to educate the populace and reduce contamination.
“Our contamination rate citywide — it's somewhere around 3-5%," he said. "The nationwide contamination rate hovers between 17 and 40%."
Smith has been driving changes to the city’s recycling process. When he began as sanitation supervisor for the city, he found the city paid a lot of money for companies to take its recycling, only for the recycling to end up in a landfill regardless.
Since then, he has worked to make the city’s recycling an in-house process. Currently, Flagler Beach only recycles aluminum, tin, cardboard and glass in addition to the new film plastics. For Earth Day in 2022, the city began operating one of the only glass recycling machines in the area, called Big Blue.
"We're bringing in income every month, every month the numbers go up," Smith said. "They don't go crazy, but they go up four or 5% every month."
Smith worked with then-City Commissioner Ken Bryan to make the contract with NexTrex happen for the city. The two of them were attending an annual recycling conference in Bonita Springs in the summer of 2022 when they met NexTrex representatives.
"We had just completed the ribbon cutting for Big Blue," Bryan said. "So Rob said, 'You know, we've got to find some other things to do.'"
Bryan collected his own film plastic over a few weeks and brought the bundle with him to the ribbon cutting to showcase how much film plastic one individual can accumulate. He said he normally takes the plastic to one of the stores that offer film plastic recycling, but now he'll be taking it to one of the city's receptacles.
"Now we're going to have people right here in our own city that can not only dispose of their plastic bags and plastic products right here, but we can also generate a revenue stream for Flagler Beach," he said.
Smith also announced at the that he, alongside the city, are working to create another location next to the Flagler Beach Police Department with recycling receptacles for all the city's recyclables that serves as an education-center for residents. While it is still in the process, Smith said he already has volunteers lining up to help out and hopes to open it in the next couple of month for a few days a week.
"The only way to do this is to get education out to the public," Smith said. "It's important that we do baby steps and work towards everything going the right way."
