SEQUIM — After 67 years, Sequim’s Boy Scout Troop 490 is shutting down its newspaper collection boxes.
“We have no choice but to stop the recycled paper business,” said Steve Vogel, Troop 490’s committee chairman.
“Since the paper prices have plummeted and fuel for the trucking the paper is very high, this has sent [us] into a negative profit range.”
Vogel said the troop has collected newspaper from boxes in the St. Joseph Catholic Church parking lot on Maple Street and at Gwennie’s Restaurant and QFC, both on East Washington Street, since 1942.
He thanked QFC, St. Joseph’s, Gwennie’s and the Leman family for helping the Boy Scouts raise money over the decades.
“We were getting over 8 cents per pound,” Vogel said. “Now it runs somewhere between three-quarters of a cent to 1.8 cents per pound. The troop lost somewhere around $2,800 in the last load,” trucked to Key Fiber, a Wenatchee recycler.
Local residents who still want their newspapers recycled, Vogel said, can drop them off in the large collection bins at the Blue Mountain Transfer Station, 1024 Blue Mountain Road, or the Regional Transfer Station, 3501 W. 18th St., Port Angeles.
“We hope the economic recovery soon improves,” Vogel added, “and the recycling of newspapers becomes profitable to start back up.”
