Market forces are making it hard to find buyers willing to take on our recyclable materials.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) - The cliche about one man's trash being another man's treasure applies to our recycling programs but lately, the things we recycle don't add up to treasure anymore.

Recycling contracts have to mean money for the companies that haul it away. Different items are worth different amounts depending on who wants to buy them and turn them into new products. That has been a challenge for municipal recycling programs in the last year and part of the reason Little Rock will soon change its current contracts.

“It's requiring some changes - some substantial changes,” said Mayor Mark Stodola. He will ask the Little Rock Board of Directors to approve a new 30-month contract with Waste Management.

Under this contract, rates will climb from $2.99 a month up to $4.14.

Market forces are making it hard to find buyers willing to take on our recyclable materials.

“If you can't sell the recycled material, then what the consumer does on a daily basis really doesn't make any difference,” said Craig Douglass, director of the Regional Recycling District that manages the programs for Little Rock, Pulaski County, Maumelle and soon Sherwood and North Little Rock. “You've got things in your recycling bin that shouldn't be there.”

For years we could count on China to buy our trash, but for various reasons, our recycled stuff just isn't clean enough, and they don't want it anymore.

“China used to be taking about 40 percent of all the recycled material in the country,” Mayor Stodola said. “They've stopped that completely.”

So now we need to clean up our curbside bins, and that means no more glass going in there.

“Whatever we put in the cart needs to be clean,” said Rusty Miller, the plant manager at Recycle America, the Waste Management facility in the Port of Little Rock. “End-users are demanding more and more quality and less contaminants.”

The mayor still stands by the program even as consumer prices rise.

“I think it's the right thing to do environmentally,” he said. “I think it's the right thing to do as a progressive city, and I am pretty confident that we're going to continue to have a program of recycling that continues on into the future for an indefinite period of time.”