Glen Industries is studying the impact of the new recycling scheme to see how hard its finances will be hit by it.
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Before the new “reverse vending machine” in the Woolworths car-park, the enterprise which gives work to disabled people had a monopoly on recycling.
Glen Innes Severn Council hired a contractor to collect bottles, cans and paper and this was then sorted and sold by Glen Innes to recycling centres.
But the new machine is taking 4,000 bottles and cans a day, some of which could have been lucrative product to be sold by Glen Industries.
Glen Industries General Manager Kyle Hawkins, didn’t respond to a request for comment but said on Facebook: “ Often change presents a number of uncertainties.”
She also said: “We are monitoring this closely” and added: “It is difficult at this point for our organization to quantify any impact on our operations from the Container Deposit Scheme.”
Residents who choose not to make Container deposits for redemption at the vending machines can continue to place their recycling in their curbside.
- Kylie Hawkins, Glen Industries.
A Glen Innes councillor is also questioning whether the town’s new recycling scheme will damage Glen Industries.
Andrew Parsons said the new scheme had been “poorly conceived”.
Glen Industries doesn’t provide any monetary incentive, though one of its advantages is that the council collects the waste from your own home.
Cr Parsons fears the new operator appointed by the state government could damage Glen Industries’ finances “because the margins are so fine” on recycling.
The best case scenario for Glen Industries is that all the cans and bottles now being recycled through the Woolworths car park machine would otherwise have been thrown away.
But a worse scenario for Glen Industries would be where the stuff going to Woolworth car park would instead have come to Glen Industries and so made it money.
An unanswered question is what would happen if the Glen Industries recycling scheme now became much less financially viable because of the new rival NSW government scheme?