The Seaside Recycling Center will close on May 31, with city councilors recommending relocating glass recycling to the Visitors Bureau parking lot and cardboard recycling to the south side of the Convention Center.

Recology recently announced it would be closing the recycling center, located on Avenue S adjacent to the city-sanctioned homeless encampment, due to unauthorized dumping that strained staff resources and angered nearby residents and businesses.

City Manager Spencer Kyle said that although the proximity of the homeless camp may be a contributing factor, the real issue comes down to individuals dumping at the location with little to no repercussions due to a lack of surveillance in the area.

“Now, under the state law, we are required to offer certain recycling services,” he said. “Because we already do the mixed recycling at the curbs, the only thing that we are missing is glass recycling … this recycling depot has always had a place to recycle your glass.

“We have also talked about doing curbside glass, curbside green waste and things like that. However, the initial numbers we got back are — it’s pretty expensive.”

As the city worked with Recology on the issue, the idea arose to split cardboard and glass recycling, with a dedicated recycling location for each. While cardboard can be deposited in residents’ mixed recycling containers, larger pieces of cardboard are often a tough fit, leading quite a few residents and businesses to instead use the recycling depot.

City staff reviewed potential glass recycling locations across the city and landed on the back corner of the Visitors Bureau parking lot as the best option.

“Staff would have more regular eyes on it; there’s a lot of people — it would be difficult to just dump at this location,” Kyle said. “It’s also fairly convenient and easy to access for our residents who are in need of glass recycling.”

Because the proposed location is at the border of the Visitors Bureau parking lot and the Sunset Empire Rec Center, the Sunset Empire Parks and Recreation District expressed concerns about increased through traffic from its parking lot to the Visitors Bureau lot. Kyle said the city would take the opportunity to close the connection between the parking lots with eco-blocks, which are made from recycled concrete.

For cardboard recycling, Kyle said, the idea was to relocate closer to downtown for better accessibility for businesses. City staff identified three parking spaces along the south side of the convention center — two parking spaces would be removed to make space for cardboard recycling, while the third spot would be used specifically by convention center attendees.

“There’s often trucks that are used for loading and unloading,” he said. “And having a designated spot for those purposes — not for the city, but for groups coming through — would be helpful to them.

“We’d propose to build an enclosure around it, just for the aesthetics, to make it look nicer and try to match the colors and other things so it blends in well and doesn’t detract from the convention center.”

Councilors expressed concerns over losing parking spaces downtown and whether the receptacle could hold the amount of cardboard discarded by residents and businesses, but agreed that the convenience of the location to businesses downtown outweighed the loss of two spaces.

The motion to relocate glass recycling to the Visitors Bureau parking lot and to relocate cardboard recycling to the south side of the convention center was unanimously approved by the City Council.

The city will put up signs at the Avenue S recycling center alerting patrons of the change, and will run recycling services at both the current recycling center and at the new locations for the next month in order to give residents and businesses a chance to adjust to the shift.