BLUE SPRINGS, Mo. — There's one less place to take your plastic bottles and paper bags in Jackson County. The Pink Hill Park Recycling Center in Blue Springs closed on Sunday at 4 p.m.
"This is the type of activity you'd like to see continue, but unfortunately we weren't able to continue our part of it," Randy Cooper, Superintendent of Blue Springs Parks and Buildings, said.
Cooper has overseen the recycling center for the city since it opened in 2010. Because so many other communities closed their centers, Cooper told 41 Action News the Pink Hill Park facility typically saw 400-500 people a day dropping off their waste.
"We were the only one on the eastern Jackson County side that was still functioning," he explained.
The big green containers that fill the Pink Hill Park Recycling Center lot will be hauled off in the next couple of days. In the meantime, a group of citizens called Green Blue Springshas been hard at work with the city's solid waste commission, trying to find alternatives for those who still want to recycle.
Green Blue Springs surveyed residents who visited the center before it closed, asking them where they were from, what they liked about the Pink Hill Park facility, and what they planned to do with their recycling moving forward.
"The big majority of people said they didn't know," Becky Arthur, who volunteers with the group, said.
Arthur said Green Blue Springs surveyed more than 500 people as part of its research process. The group will present its findings at the Solid Waste Management Commission meeting on October 18 at 6:30 p.m.
If you'd like to join the mailing list for Green Blue Springs updates, you can send an email to city@bluespringsgov.com
In the meantime, the city listed three companies that provide residential recycling in the area:
- AAA Disposal - 816-650-3180
- Gravatt Waste Solutions - 816-995-7959
- WCA - 816-220-3227
