Western Recycling is moving to a new location, but curbside service will continue
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IDAHO FALLS — A major recycling company in eastern Idaho will continue to provide curbside recycling services as it transitions to a new location.
Western Recycling is moving to a new property after 20 years at 1020 Denver Street in Idaho Falls.
The company has secured an 8-acre property and will announce its new location once the building has been retrofitted and is ready to accept recyclable materials.
In the interim, the company has partnered with Pacific Recycling to bale all the materials it collects through its curbside service, said Western Recycling representative Niki Dean.
“We are the only provider of a curbside recycling program (in Idaho Falls),” Dean said.
The company also serves Ammon, Rigby, Ucon, and the outskirts of Shelley with its curbside collection service. The city of Rexburg provides recycling for all of its residents, and Western Recycling completes those routes as well.
In June alone, the company shipped 1.5 million total pounds of cardboard and 266,000 pounds of other material to be recycled — saving them from a landfill.
The cardboard is bought by a large paper mill, where it is recycled into paper products, Dean said, while the comingled recyclables are sold to a large national company which sorts the material and sells individual components on the market as “plastics, mixed paper, tin and aluminum.”
Most of the separated goods are bought by companies in Washington or Oregon, Dean said.
Since the city of Idaho Falls stopped offering recycling drop-off containers on Jan. 16 (for materials other than glass), Western Recycling has seen increased demand for its residential and commercial services.
RELATED | Idaho Falls will no longer provide recycling bins, except for glass, due to rising costs
It has about 4,500 curbside customers. Most of these are residential, but businesses and schools are also included.
Between December 2023 and July, the company signed on 435 new customers.
Individuals interested in curbside recycling can sign up at www.westernrecycling.net/curbside. The services cost $12 a month. Western Recycling provides a 95-gallon container on wheels and collects materials every two weeks. The recyclables do not need to be sorted.
The program accepts “mixed paper products — newspapers, magazines, phone books, catalogs, cardboard boxes, cereal boxes, frozen food boxes, paper towel cores, office paper, note pads, index cards, coated paper, brochures, envelopes, manila folders, junk mail, etc.; plastics — all plastic beverage and household cleaner containers #1 and #2 only (must be rinsed of contents); and tin and aluminum cans (must be rinsed of contents),” according to its website.
It does not take “glass, plastic bags, plastic #’s 3-7, medical waste, food waste, or packaging materials (peanuts, bubble wrap and Styrofoam).”
Commercial businesses can recycle for $17 a month.
The company also services 250 front-load bins that recycle cardboard for businesses such as McDonald’s and Olive Garden.
According to Western Recycling’s Idaho Falls Office Manager Dawn Beaty, its new facility should be open in a couple months.
“We’re having some problems getting electricity to the new building, and so hence, until we get electricity, we can’t start operating yet,” she said.
But the family-owned company is proud to continue offering recycling services in eastern Idaho.
The company has provided commercial recycling for 20 years in Idaho Falls, Beaty said, and has operated its curbside program since 2012.
“A lot of people are just so grateful that there’s the service. We’re happy to provide it and grateful that we were able to find a new location where we continue to provide the service,” Dean said.
