Phillip Panagos would really like to recycle the 30- or 40-gallon containers full of glass that Matador produces every day. As general manager of the tequila bar chain’s Tacoma operations, Panagos is in charge of a lot of things. One of those things is making sure the restaurant stays profitable, which makes the $2,400 per year his company would have to spend to maintain curbside glass recycling a difficult venture. The restaurant is doing well, he says, but in times like these, $200 a month to have the City of Tacoma collect beer bottles, liquor bottles and other glass waste isn’t something he can afford.

“I’m here running a for-profit business, and an extra $200 [per month] is something I just can’t justify,” says Panagos. “We have five or six bars down here that go through 30 or 40 gallons of glass per day. I’m pretty sure most of us just throw it away.”

Panagos’s dilemma is not a new one. Since curbside recycling was introduced a couple decades ago, businesses have struggled with the extra cost that comes with being environmentally responsible. The fundamental question becomes, whose job is it to pay for all this? Business owners would like government agencies to help pay the bill by providing free recycling services, assuming that cities could make money managing and selling recycled materials, just like private companies do. Many restaurant owners who have recycled glass in the past say they have stopped recycling to manage costs. One restaurant manager, who asked not to be named, says that it’s simply too expensive to pay to recycle glass. There’s no incentive.

“We just throw it away,” he says.

Government agencies, meanwhile, would like businesses to share the cost of managing the waste they produce. Businesses are charged for a container to hold glass, which helps the city cover the costs of collecting and processing glass. Compared to other cities, Tacoma’s rates are competitive, and generous in some cases. But even generous doesn’t cut it for restaurants and bars that have seen revenues disappear, along with customers. For many it becomes a choice between meeting business goals and being environmentally responsible. Ultimately, the bottom line wins out.

Beyond cost concerns are more immediate environment concerns of another sort. Even if local restaurants and bars were able to afford to pay to maintain recycling bins, many downtown restaurants don’t have a place to put them. At Matador, space is at a premium. It’s just plain unsightly to have bins overflowing with glass on the sidewalk, which is the only place to put bins in many cases.

“Space is at a premium down here,” he says. “We could put it on the sidewalk, but it would look all junky.”

Other options for restaurants and bars looking to recycle include hauling it to a large, central city compactor, where they can drop the glass off free of charge. If that sounds like a good deal, it is. But many restaurant owners don’t have the truck required to haul a half-ton of glass, and others simply don’t have the time or staff to dedicate to the hauling and dumping.

“That’s time out of my day, or time out of my staff’s day. I can take it to the recyclers all day, but I’d have to get a truck and go down there every day at that point,” says Panagos.

City of Tacoma spokesperson Michelle Warmuth says the city does all it can to help businesses find recycling solutions that work. The city provides an auditing service that pairs business owners with a city-paid consultant who will head down to any business and help them figure out how to deal with their recycling needs in a cost-effective manner. Of 4,400 potential commercial recycling customers, the city has met with about half in an attempt to promote recycling as a responsible and affordable option for getting rid of waste. The benefits of recycling aren’t always profound for every business, she admits. But most businesses can benefit from a waste audit and the city-consultant-generated strategies for dealing with it. Recycling containers, for example, are cheaper than garbage containers, she says, and most businesses that generate lots of waste should look into recycling as a way to save money. Businesses also have the option of paying private recycling companies such as LeMay Enterprises to pick up their recyclable waste.

But then we’re back to cost concerns. It’s a perennial problem in the world of recycling — who’s going to pay for it. Businesses say governments should pay for the cost of recycling. Governments want businesses and materials manufacturers to pay some portion of the costs.

But solutions are beginning to emerge as business and governments work together to find a solution. Legislation in North Carolina, for example, that requires all Alcohol Beverage Control permit holders to have recycling containers has brought in an additional 33,750 tons of glass bottles, plastic, and cans for recycling. It’s also encouraged the start-up of about a dozen new businesses to collect the recyclables.

Of the materials being recycled today, glass is still one of the most difficult to reuse. Currently only a small fraction of all glass, especially bottle glass, is actually recycled, according to the Glass Recycling Institute. Of the 17 million tons of glass produced each year, only 2.5 million tons are recycled or reused by bottle makers. Because the United State does not mandate recycling of glass like Europe does, businesses and local governments end up struggling to decide who’s going to pay for it. The beverage industry, which is among the most powerful political lobbies in the nation, don’t really help, and work hard to kill any legislation that would force businesses to help deal with the waste they produce.

With profit motives, or saving tax dollars, as the primary motivator, most cities and counties are falling farther and farther behind. And the way people are drinking these days, the pile of glass, which takes about 4,000 years to decompose, just keeps getting bigger.