Flagler Beach now recycles ‘film plastics’

The city has partnered with a company that will pay for recycling of plastic bags, Ziplocs and more.

Sierra Williams Staff Writer

Flagler Beach is adding some plastics back into its recycling stream.

The city has partnered with the company NexTrex, which will pay the city for film plastics and turn them into decking boards.

The city held a ribbon cutting for its first recycling receptacle on April 27. Residents will be able to begin recycling on May 15.

“There’s no third party there,” Sanitation Supervisor Rob Smith said. “So all the revenue that this brings in will continue to help keep our garbage bill $10 to $15 a month less than, hopefully, over the bridge.”

Smith said the city is starting with only three receptacles for now — at City Hall, the Flagler Beach Pier and the city’s library — but could expand as needed.

Residents can recycle grocery and produce bags, newspaper sleeves, stretch film and pallet wrap, ice bags, cereal bags, bubble wrap, plastic shipping envelopes, dry cleaning bags, Ziploc and other resealable food storage bags and polyethylene films labeled 2 and 4.

The plastic must be clean and dry, according to a NexTrex informational brochure handed out at the ribbon cutting.

Residents will not be able to recycle items like frozen food bags, prewashed salad mix bags, laminated film, cheese bags or degradable bags.

“The most important part of this is that we all work together and do the right thing, because the contamination kills the whole program,” Smith said.

If people contaminate the receptacles with non-recyclable items, all of the properly recycled items must be thrown out, he said.

That is also the case with the city’s other recycling items, and Smith and his team work hard to educate people to reduce contamination.

“Our contamination rate citywide — it’s somewhere around 3-5%,” he said. “The nationwide contamination rate hovers between 17 and 40%.”

Smith has been driving changes to the city’s recycling process.

When he began working as sanitation supervisor for the city, he found that the city was paying a lot of money for companies to take recycling, only for the recycling to end up in a landfill.

Since then, he has worked to bring the city’s recycling process in house.

Currently, Flagler Beach recycles aluminum, tin, cardboard and glass in addition to the new film plastics.

For Earth Day in 2022, the city began operating “Big Blue,” one of the only glass recycling machines in the area.

“We’re bringing in income every month; every month the numbers go up,” Smith said. “They don’t go crazy, but they go up four or 5% every month.”

Smith worked with then-City Commissioner Ken Bryan to make the NexTrex agreement happen.

The two were attending an annual recycling conference in Bonita Springs in the summer of 2022 when they met NexTrex representatives.