Monroe County officials say they are often asked why the county collects and recycles only No. 1 and No. 2 plastics. Why not collect others, especially No. 5 plastic?

County officials have, over the years, said that they don't have a buyer for No. 5 plastic; that a sustainable market does not exist.

The question will likely come up again, especially since Onondaga County's independent recycling agency started accepting No. 5 plastic in July; things like yogurt cups and butter tubs.

It's easy to say that if Onondaga can do it, so can Monroe. But that oversimplifies the matter; several intertwining factors affect whether a specific material gets recycled. And yes, whether there's a market for the materials is a significant question.

County recycling program operators need reliable buyers for the products, otherwise they're left with piles of plastic they have to either store or throw away. Once residents are given the OK to put something in recycling bins, it's tough to get them to stop if, say, the market dries up.

Kristen Lawton, public information officer for the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency, says it's "almost impossible" to do that because people form the habit. That thought's echoed by Russ Rutkowski, associate engineer in Monroe County's Department of Environmental Services.

"We don't want to be like a sort of water faucet: turning the thing on and turning it off," he says.

At the same time, there is demand from county residents; community groups and organizations have organized No. 5 plastic collection events. Robin Weintraub of Brighton helped organize a collection event the Sunday after Earth Day. It was a cool, rainy day and organizers collected about a half-ton of No.5 plastic. That's 72 extra-large garbage bags full.

"People were thanking us for doing it," Weintraub says.

The idea was to send whatever was collected to a company in Cortland, which would remake the plastics into things like toothbrushes and razor handles. Since that company was only set up for mail, however, volunteers wound up trucking the plastic to a local recycling center that accepted No.5 plastic.

Events like the one Weintraub organized - she worked through the Jewish Federation and other faith organizations jumped in - illustrate the entrepreneurial nature of recycling. And it's that entrepreneurial bent that makes recycling so market-driven.

In short, if people can find a way to make a profit off of a recyclable material, then they'll buy it from municipalities.

"There's got to be a market for it to work at all," says Kris Hughes, Ontario County's director of planning.

Ultimately, OCRRA found a market via one of its contractors.

OCRRA doesn't recycle materials itself. Rather, it contracts with material recovery facilities; essentially privately run recycling centers that collect and sort recyclables, then sell them off.

One of the agency's contractors is Recycle America, an arm of Waste Management. Recycle America collects and sorts the plastics then sells it. The staff at that facility determined that they could find a regular buyer or buyers for No. 5 plastic, Lawton says, calling it an "emerging market."

OCRRA looked at the No. 5 plastic issue for "quite some time," Lawton says, and discussed the issue with several organizations before moving ahead. Residents had asked the agency to expand its plastics recycling program. But the agency didn't want to start collecting the plastics unless it was sure the plastics would consistently get recycled "instead of just having that feel-good feeling of dropping it in a bin," Lawton says.

Some communities do collect a wide range of plastics with no guarantee that they'll all be recycled. With No. 1 and No. 2 plastics, it's very likely they'll be recycled, since there is such a demand in the market. But the market is much smaller for No. 3 through No. 7 plastics. A fact sheet on the Niagara County website, for example, cautions readers that just because No. 3 through No. 7 plastics are collected, doesn't mean they're getting recycled. In some cases those plastics are collected in hopes of collecting more No. 1 and No. 2 plastics in the process.

Monroe County owns its recycling facility, but leases it out to Metro Waste Paper Recovery to operate. Metro officials have told the county that nobody's approached them about purchasing No. 5 plastic, Rutkowski says. It's the opposite case with No. 1 and No. 2 plastics.

No. 5 plastic represents about 1 percent of the plastics in Monroe County's waste streams, Rutkowski says. No. 1 and No. 2 plastics represent a combined 96 percent of the plastics waste.

Ontario County has a similar arrangement. It owns a recycling center, but leases it to Casella Waste Systems. The facility primarily collects No. 1 and No. 2 plastics; last year it brought in about 2,200 tons of those plastics, Hughes says. It also takes in other plastics, though at a considerably lower level, 20.43 tons.

So if the market's the issue, then the key to expanding plastics recycling is to expand the market for those products.

That's exactly what the state is recommending in the current draft of its updated solid waste management plan. The focus of the updated document is to divert more materials from landfills.

But the state cannot just command an expansion of the recycled plastics market. Instead, it proposes using traditional economic development methods to grow that market.

One way that'll happen is if businesses find an end use for recycled No. 5 plastic. Again, that's the entrepreneurial side of recycling. One of the state plan's recommendations is to offer tax and other financial incentives to businesses and start-ups that recycle or reuse No. 5 plastic and other less commonly recycled materials. Jobs could be a side benefit to that approach.

The plan says the state can also help fund infrastructure upgrades to encourage expanded plastic recycling. So the state might, for example, help fund the purchase of sorting equipment that would better let recycling center operators separate the different kinds of plastics.

But the most effective solution to the problem of unrecycled plastics is not to use them in the first place. One way for that to happen is for retailers to demand that product manufacturers change packing so it uses fewer resources and so it's recyclable. That could also mean finding ways to get producers to make packaging changes on their own.

If a recycling market never develops for No. 5 plastic, that's where things would logically head.