Jul 24, 2018 By Matthew Guerry for The Almanac writer@thealmanac.Net 2 min read

Starting next year, Mt. Lebanon residents will be unable to throw glass and select types of plastic into their recycling bins.

Neighboring residents will similarly be affected when the South Hills Area Council of Governments enters into a new five-year, joint trash-hauling contract in 2019.

New recycling regulations abroad and a diminishing potential for the resale of recyclable materials is forcing haulers to cut items they once accepted, officials told the Mt. Lebanon commissioners during their July 23 meeting.

“This is not something Mt. Lebanon is dictating, this is something that is being dictated to us from outside sources,” municipal planner Ian McMeans said.

McMeans said the changes will apply regardless of the waste management company with which SHACOG is contracted. Residents will still be able to recycle paper, cardboard, tin, aluminum and plastics bearing recycling code numbers 1 and 2, but can no longer recycle glass or plastics numbered 3 and 4. Items commonly numbered 1 or 2 include pop bottles, milk jugs and shampoo bottles, public works director Rudy Sukal said.

McMeans and Sukal said recycling businesses in the Pacific Rim, where recyclables are often transported, will return shipments of recyclables with higher than 0.5-percent contamination per ton. Contaminants include food waste, they said, and will soon include unaccepted materials.

For each ton of rejected recyclables, haulers will slap their customers with a fine of $150 starting in 2020. Sukal said that glass makes up 20 percent of all materials recycled in the township each year.

“Based on our historical numbers and averages of tonnages, if we average it out and everything was considered contaminated, we’re probably looking at between $250,000 and 350,000 in penalties,” Sukal said.

Mt. Lebanon’s current waste management contractor is Republic Services, which has bid on a new contract along with Waste Management and the Westmoreland Sanitary Landfill.

Also during the meeting, Mt. Lebanon commissioners awarded an $8,000 contract for deer management services to Suburban Wildlife Management Solutions LLC. The company will oversee deer management in the area during the 2018-19 archery season, replacing former contract holder White Buffalo Inc.

White Buffalo had overseen the program in Mt. Lebanon since it started in 2014. McMeans said the program won’t change with the awarding to a new bidder, and that many archers who volunteered previously with White Buffalo work with Suburban Wildlife.

Jim Stevick of Suburban Wildlife said at the meeting that he had overseen a deer management program in Peters Township for 15 years.