Medina County has persuaded about a dozen churches and nonprofit groups to stop recycling newspaper with AbitibiBowater Inc. — the company that uses the bright green and yellow bins — and those efforts are continuing, Bill Strazinsky, who heads the Medina County Solid Waste Management District, said this week.
An additional half-dozen recycling programs are considering the county’s request and another 10 to 12 groups still must be contacted directly, 
Strazinsky said.
“We’ve gotten rid of some [bins], but we still have a ways to go,” he said. “It’s a long process.”
Strazinsky said he hopes to conclude Medina County’s initiative by mid-January without legal action.
Last summer, the county said it is losing hundreds of thousands of dollars to AbitibiBowater and threatened to sue local recycling programs to force them to stop using the green and yellow bins. It mailed letters to local churches and nonprofit groups that recycle newspapers.
AbitibiBowater has defended its recycling and asked why its program is being singled out and why the county is not going after other commercial recycling operations.
The county’s biggest concern is it believes AbitibiBowater’s bins cost the garbage district about $342,000 in lost income in 2010.
Strazinsky said the county takes a double financial hit on the estimated 1,900 tons of newspapers that go to AbitibiBowater.
First, the county gets less income on trash shipped to its Central Processing Facility in Westfield Township. That money is used to operate the plant. That lost income twice has forced Medina County to raise the tipping fee haulers and their customers pay at the county facility.
Medina County estimates it lost about $114,000 in tipping fees in 2010 from the missing newspapers, Strazinsky said.
In addition, the loss of 1,900 tons of newspapers to AbitibiBowater meant Medina County lost $228,000 it could have made recycling those papers.
The county’s volume of newspaper has dropped from about 5,000 tons a year to about 3,100 tons a year, Strazinsky said.
AbitibiBowater installed its bins in Medina County in 2005 and 2006.
The county met with AbitibiBowater in August 2010 to resolve the issue but nothing changed, officials said.
In late 2010, the seven Medina County public school districts, at the county’s request, agreed to stop using AbitibiBowater bins at 24 buildings.
What is happening in Medina County is different from other counties in Northeast Ohio.
When the processing facility was built, the Medina commissioners ordered that all waste produced in the county must go to the plant. That is called “flow control” and provided assurance the county-run plant would get enough trash to operate effectively. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld that policy.
Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com.