By Eric Curl
March 28, 2023 – The city is looking to continue the 14-year-old curbside recycling program, ahead of the current service contract’s expiration.
To keep the program going, the city recently issued a request for proposals to accept, process and transfer recyclable materials. The request does not include any major changes to the service that has been provided by Atlanta-based Pratt Recycling since the program was implemented in 2009, according to city spokesperson Nick Zoller.
When the program was first implemented, Pratt paid the city $15 per ton for the materials for the first 10 years due to strong offshore demand. The market demand changed nationwide in 2018 after China stopped accepting recyclables from the US. When the Savannah City Council last approved a renewal of a contract with Pratt in March 2021, the city agreed to pay Pratt $150 per ton, up to $734,000. Glass is no longer recycled by the company and residents have two options for disposing of it, either taking it to one of the city’s glass-recycling drop off locations or disposing of it in their trash cart.
Putting glass in the recycling cart just increases the city’s costs, due to that per-ton fee, and will just end up in the landfill anyway. City officials estimated in 2021 that the elimination of glass from handling in the recycling system would result in a drop of about 1,000 tons annually and reduce costs by $150,000.
The city is continuing to explore long-term possibilities to prevent glass from ending up in landfills, Zoller said. The RFP comes after the city recently introduced drop-off recycling locations as an alternative following the discontinuation of the recycling of glass bottles and containers in 2015, as reported in January by the Savannah Morning News. Glass collected at the drop-off locations is recycled into various products, including new glass containers, recycled glass countertops, and foamed glass – which can be used in construction projects, according to the city’s webpage for the program.
The pending contract would be good for a year and could be renewed for an additional four. 
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