Dive Brief:
- Officials from the Medina County Solid Waste District are rewriting a five-year plan for a recycling facility in Medina, OH after criticism from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
- The state EPA issued the district an "advisory opinion" in which the agency highlighted many errors, including inflated recycling rates and discrepancies in its assessment of long-term financial viability.
- The EPA also criticized a recent public survey the county conducted that asked residents a series of questions about recycling. The agency called the questionnaire “difficult to understand” and “misleading,” and took issue with the way curbside collections were presented in the survey.
Dive Insight:
The EPA recommends that the county send out a revised survey to residents after consulting with the agency and others about how to re-frame the questions.
The criticism comes in the midst of a decision by county officials to choose between Envision Waste and Vexor Technology as the next company to operate the recycling plant. Envision Waste is the plant’s current operator.