CITY, BFI MAY REACH RECYCLING PACT

Mike Murphy talks trash with enthusiasm as he walks through a cavernous, concrete-block building stacked full of towering bales of newspapers, magazines, office paper, cardboard and flattened plastic soda and milk bottles.

The building is the BFI Recyclery on Nash Road and is used to recycle about 1,000 tons of trash a month.

Murphy is operations manager for BFI of Southern Illinois, a trash hauling and disposal business based in Marion, Ill.

The company serves a large region of Southern Illinois and extends across the Mississippi River into the Cape Girardeau area.

At its Cape Girardeau facility, materials are sorted, baled and shipped to various recycling mills. BFI has been handling mostly paper.

Magazines are sent to a Chicago mill where ultimately they will be turned into newsprint for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Much of the paper material is sent to mills in Tennessee, Oklahoma and Georgia.

Plastic soda bottles are shipped to companies that turn them into fiber for rugs and carpets, and the fuzz on tennis balls.

Plastic milk bottles provide the material needed for plastic lumber.

At $25 a ton to bury trash in a landfill, recycling seems a sound financial alternative.

"Right now, it makes a lot of economic sense to recycle," Murphy said as several workers stood on an elevated, blue metal platform, sorting materials by hand Wednesday. Nearby, workers fed cardboard into a baler.

Murphy isn't the only one talking recycling these days. Cape Girardeau city officials are, too.

The city wants BFI to sort and sell the 30 tons of recyclable materials the city collects each month.

BFI would receive a handling fee and a percentage of the revenue from sales of the recyclable materials.

The city's Steve Cook said the move would save the city the cost of investing in expensive new equipment at its Broadview recycling center as more and more people recycle trash.

Only 25 to 29 percent of the city's 10,000 residential customers put out recyclable materials for pickup on any given week.

But that percentage is expected to climb if the city limits the number of bags of non-recyclable trash that can be placed at the curb. The Broadview facility isn't equipped to handle that, city officials said.

The proposed contract would also allow the city to tap into BFI's international marketing of recyclable materials.

BFI of Southern Illinois is part of Browning-Ferris Industries, an international company based in Houston.

"They are wanting the product," Cook said. "They are equipped for the product and if we can pay them a fee and still come out at break-even or above, we think it is a win-win situation." As the city's environmental services coordinator, Cook oversees trash pickup and recycling.

The city and BFI hope to sign a contract soon. Under the agreement, BFI would take glass, plastic, aluminum, newspapers, cardboard, magazines and steel and tin cans. The list could be expanded to include mixed paper, such as junk mail.

Cook said the city already takes plastic, newspaper and cardboard to BFI, but only after initially sorting it at the city's recycling center.

The city's recycling center would remain open, but only as a drop-off point for citizens to bring in recyclable trash. The city would continue its curbside pick-up of recyclable materials.

BFI at a glance

Browning-Ferris Industries of Houston has 37,000 employees and operates some 650 companies worldwide.

BFI has 100 recycling centers and is the nation's biggest paper recycler. Last year, it recycled 3 million tons of paper fiber and is expected to recycle 5 million tons this year.

The company plans to build 20 more recycling facilities in the Midwest alone in the next 1 1/2 years.

BFI opened its Cape Girardeau plant in a former warehouse on Nash Road in June 1992 and started full-scale recycling operations in November 1992.

The facility recycles about 12,000 tons of trash annually.

Most of its recyclable materials come from major employers in the area, such as the Procter and Gamble plant, and Southeast Missouri State University.