03/06/2025

New Partnership Expands Plastics Accepted by Tyler’s Recycling Program

KLTV/MSN | April Pierdant | Mar. 4, 2025

New Partnership Expands Plastics Accepted by Tyler’s Recycling Program

The city council approved a partnership with Cyclyx International Company to help expand Tyler’s recycling program.

Since a recycling plant caught on fire last year in Kilgore, options for recycling in much of East Texas have been limited.

The City of Tyler’s recycling center has been one option, and now it’s expanding with the goal of decreasing plastic waste.

“Starting today, the recycling center has started accepting plastics three to five,” said Leroy Sparrow, the solid waste director in Tyler.

Those plastics include shopping bags, plastic films, yogurt cups, straws and hangers.

“Three is mostly going to be PVC pipes, which is what the company still does not want,” said Sparrow.

The initiative expands their acceptance of number one and two plastic items that include water bottles or plastic milk containers.

“This is to allow people to be able to recycle more plastics. It’s just going to be reused instead of buried until it decomposes,” he said.

The U.S. produces about 287 lbs. of plastic waste per person each year. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, it is estimated that the amount of plastic waste in the United States is 44 million metric tons, and that there will be more plastics by weight than fish in the ocean by 2050.

“Accepting these additional plastics, it just beats many more plastic items that we can keep out of the landfill,” Sparrow said.

Each one of the bails holds about 600 pounds of plastic. Once they have about 40 to 50 bails, that’s when Cyclyx comes in and helps transport them to recycle them into new plastic.

With the new partnership, Cyclyx will pay the city three and a half cents per ton of collected material.

“We are going to try this for a year, and it would be a great test to see what our volume increase is by accepting these additional plastics,” said Sparrow.

For Randy Rabeck, who drove all the way from Gladewater to recycle his plastic, educating people on the subject is important.

“I believe a lot of education is necessary. People want to recycle and want to be good stewards to the things that we have,” said Rabeck.

The initiative is an effort to help keep the environment clean and healthy for future generations.

According to Frontier Waste Solutions, there are currently 180 landfills spread out across the State of Texas, and it is estimated that four of Texas’ largest cities will run out of landfill space by 2030.