On a brisk Saturday morning earlier this year, nearly 200 residents lined up at the Forward Township Municipal Building to discard unwanted TVs, printers, laptops and hazardous household waste. By early afternoon, 197 vehicles had passed through Butler County’s latest e-waste collection event — just one snapshot of a growing interest in responsible recycling.

In 2024 alone, Butler County recycled 85,154 tons of materials — everything from plastics and cardboard to scrap metal and electronics, according to Sheryl Kelly, the county’s longtime environmental specialist, and recycling and farmland coordinator. That’s 85,000-plus tons that didn’t end up in a landfill or dumped over a remote hill in the woods.

“I see so many recycling bins out when I’m out and I just think our citizens do a really good job of recycling,” Kelly said.

Butler County recycles 26% of its waste — at least, that’s what gets reported by the haulers.

“I think there’s more recycling going on in the county than we know of,” Kelly said.

Have you ever wondered what happens to that plastic bottle when you toss it into a blue recycling bin? Or that old washing machine you scrapped for cash? Beyond the blue bins and scrapyards lies a robust industry.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 69.1 million tons of waste were recycled nationwide in 2018. That same year, the recycling industry generated 681,000 jobs, $37.8 billion in wages and $5.5 billion in tax revenue — evidence that recycling is big business as well as good stewardship.

Metal made up 13% of the materials recycled in 2018. In Butler County, Bob’s Auto & Salvage, 249 Oneida Valley Road, handles a steady flow of metal from residents and businesses.

“There’s a lot behind it that you don’t see,” said Ross Tenney, co-owner and yard operations foreman.

At Bob’s, metal is sorted before being shipped to industrial plants to be shredded or melted down into purified solid bars called ingots. These are sold to manufacturers for use in everything from medical instruments and home furnishings to new vehicles. Some shredded metal is baled and shipped overseas.

“Metal can contaminate the ground. It can leave residue,” Tenney said. “Metal being recycled keeps it out of our ground. It keeps it being used and profited into new metal that you can reuse.”

Recycling metal also uses less energy and is less expensive than mining virgin iron ore to produce new metals.

In addition to steel, the scrapyard buys nonferrous metals like aluminum, copper and brass, which currently command higher prices.

“Anything metal — common household items — are always accepted,” Tenney said. “We deal with all types of businesses and people.”

Not all Americans have access to curbside recycling, but Butler County residents do thanks to an ordinance passed in the early 1990s. Kelly said Butler was the first county in Pennsylvania to require municipal waste haulers to provide curbside pickup for recyclables.

Companies such as Vogel Disposal Service make it easy with single-cart collection. That means residents can toss all acceptable recyclables — plastics, paper, cardboard, glass and metal cans — into one bin. These are then processed at TC Recycling, a state-of-the-art Vogel Disposal facility in Adams Township.

At TC Recycling, up to 100 tons of material are sorted and baled daily before being shipped to manufacturers. Common plastic containers, like polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles used for soda and water, are repurposed into carpet fiber, plastic straps, nonfood containers and other products.

The recycling industry was hit hard in 2018 when China stopped accepting contaminated recyclables from the United States. Recycled plastic exports from the U.S. dropped from 3.68 billion pounds in 2017 to 1.21 billion pounds in 2021, forcing the domestic market to adapt.

“China quit buying recyclables from the United States because of contamination,” Kelly explained. “So that left the markets really scrambling and, since then, they are trying to develop more infrastructure in the United States to handle our own recycling.”

Recycling contamination — when nonrecyclable or dirty items are placed in bins — remains a major issue.

“I think the biggest challenge is just making sure people recycle the right things and then just making sure they’re aware of the options out there to recycle the more hard-to-recycle items,” Kelly said, pointing to things such as tires, hazardous waste and electronics that aren’t accepted curbside.

To help residents, the county provides educational materials to municipalities and runs an informational booth each year at the Butler County Farm Show. Kelly emphasized the importance of checking with your hauler to understand what is accepted and how it should be prepared.

“I always tell people, ‘Make sure you recycle right,’” she said. “You always want to contact your hauler, because they’re going to dictate how they want things prepared and what can go in the bin. That’s very important.”

For harder-to-recycle items, Butler County hosts several drive-through events each year. Noble Environmental Specialty Recycling is contracted to collect electronics and hazardous waste during these events, charging participants by the pound. Noble passes the electronics along to approved recyclers, while some of the hazardous waste will be used as alternative fuel for cement kilns. Material too hazardous to use for fuel is incinerated.

Kelly encourages residents to make use of these specialized recycling opportunities.

Remaining 2025 Butler County household hazardous waste and electronics collection follow. All events run 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Accepted items include:

This article originally appeared in the June edition of Butler County Business Matters.