Curbside recycling is on the horizon with the Minot City Council’s decision Monday to contract for construction of a building to house collected recyclables.

“With approval of this item tonight, we are saying ‘yes’ to recycling,” council president Lisa Olson said. “There’s a lot of support.”

Although the council’s intent has been to build a transfer station for depositing recyclables before they are shipped to a sorting center in Minneapolis, Assistant Public Works Director Jason Sorenson told the council that there may be another option.

Sorenson said burning fuel to transport recyclables to a sorting center runs counter to the desire to be environmentally conscious. However, the cost of constructing a sorting facility to eliminate the need for transport was believed to be out of reach at $10 million to $15 million. Sorenson reported that his department more recently learned that smaller, modular plants can be built. By changing some equipment at the transfer facility, sorting may be possible for potentially $500,000 to $1 million, he said.

The Public Works Department continues to investigate the feasibility and plans to report back to the council once a cost analysis is available. In the meantime, plans to acquire a compactor and conveyor for the transfer facility are on hold in case a decision is made to go in the direction of sorting, which would require different equipment.

With a sorting facility, the city would market the recyclables to mills that would purchase and transport the materials.

The council accepted the low bid of Rolac Contracting for just under $4.18 million to construct a facility at a new landfill entrance being built on the south side of the landfill. The city plans to alter specifications for the concrete floor, bringing that bid cost down by about $200,000.

Not all residents are interested in recycling so the city plans to offer opt-out. Sorenson said the details of that program still need to be fully worked out.

“In order for us to make an impact with recycling, it has to be on a scale that works,” council member Mark Jantzer said. “To scale it so that we will be able to do this in a sufficient enough way to make an impact, that has to be a little bit automatic and a little bit easy for the citizens.”

He added the residential recycling program should be looked at as an initial step. To accomplish the goal of preserving landfill life by reducing the waste stream, the city needs to consider the commercial properties that aren’t among the 10,000 households eligible to participate in curbside recycling, he said.

“I hope we are able to expand on this program as we go forward,” he said.

Mayor Shaun Sipma said the first step toward recycling – the acquisition of automated garbage collection trucks in 2017 – already has made a difference in reduced worker’s compensation claims and less wayward garbage blowing around.