Public-Private Partnership: Logan County, OH

Total Population: 45,481
Collection type: Curbside and 16 Rural Drop-off Centers

Logan County is located in west-central Ohio. This rural county has two curbside programs that are integrated with a successful Pay As You Throw trash collection. The county has 16 drop-off programs to reach rural residents without curbside collection. Logan County is a Zero Waste County with a recycling rate of 77% (2015). 

PREVIOUS CHALLENGES

• The growth of our Zero Waste District was rapid, as identifying new programs with a critical goal of being sustainable.

• Unstable markets and price fluctuations 

• Glass recycling continued to be one of the biggest challenges, they built a dual stream MRF to manage the materials from drop-sites–about 2/3 of collected tons and the remainder from curbside programs. Both types of collection result in a very clean, finished commodity. They added staff to manually sort the glass.  

• Fuel prices were high, the average price of diesel was $3.55 gallon.  Open-top containers were used to transport less than 300 tons of glass per month to Newark, Ohio – 80+ miles away.  

• Four employee-hours per load (round trip), or 16 hours a month to transport the glass containers. 

MEETING THE CHALLENGE

Logan County purchased and repurposed a lumber yard in 2009 that had an existing loading dock and ample concrete walls.  A glass bunker storage area was added to their operations.  Logan County collaborated with the Ohio EPA and Rumpke seeking funding from their statewide glass initiative grant and access for mixed-color glass at a facility located in Dayton, Ohio.  Learn more about this partnership

The additional bunkers and loading space to accommodate a semi-truck load for holding glass.  By containing glass in the newly proposed manner,  they changed collection and hauling process- transporting glass in larger loads and have an acceptable unit-cost of transportation. This change made the glass a no-touch commodity – everything else comes off the line, leaving mixed color glass eliminating the former manual glass-sort process. 

Logan County is working toward offering single stream service but are doing it slowly – over a period of four to five years. This multi-year planning will help maintain the quality of the end product. When completed, it is the County's goal to have relatively equal quality, twice as much commodity and less than four added staff for inspection.