Lane County's recycling plant is still in crates while trash travels 1.5 million miles

Inside a 50,000-square-foot Eugene warehouse, conveyors, optical sorters and other machinery for Lane County's CleanLane facility remain wrapped and waiting. The system was supposed to begin operating this year. Construction has not started.

The immediate question is land. A hearing officer is considering an appeal of the county's permit to put CleanLane at Short Mountain Landfill, with a decision expected in mid-October. The original Goshen site remains possible through a code change. The county says the finished plant could pull 80,000 tons of recyclables and organics from the waste stream each year and extend the landfill's life by more than 20 years.

Meanwhile, Department of Environmental Quality records reviewed by Lookout Eugene-Springfield show more than 107,000 tons of Lane County waste went to a Waste Connections landfill near Medford in 2025. The newsroom calculated that hauling at nearly 1.5 million miles of round trips and about 1,900 metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions. Sanipac, the Waste Connections hauler making many of those trips, defended the arrangement as more sustainable and affordable for its customers. Lane County says the diverted tipping fees helped create the budget gap that led to higher transfer-station prices, shorter rural hours and the Walton site closure. The machines are idle, but the costs are not.