The worsening economy is making it a littler harder to go green in Coos County.

Star of Hope has announced it will end its decades-long service of collecting cardboard and office paper in Coos and Curry counties.

Lisa Montez, director of vocational services at the local nonprofit, said the problem is the market for recycled material is gone.

“It’s pretty much become trash,” she said. “No one’s buying it anymore.”

Started some time in the 1980s, the recycling program had become a popular — and profitable — activity.

The group collected more than 350 tons of office paper and cardboard last year. The group’s clients, adults with mental and developmental disabilities, helped pick up paper and cardboard from various businesses, sort it and pack it for recycling.

Star of Hope made between $1,000 to $1,500 a month, Montez said, by selling the materials to local industry or garbage companies.

One of those customers was Les’ Sanitation of Coos Bay.

Pete Smart, district manager of Les’ Sanitation’s parent company, Waste Connections, said it stopped paying for Star of Hope’s goods at the start of November.

The reason was fairly simple.

“This is the first time there has been such a drastic drop,” in the recyclable market, Smart said. “And it looks like it’s going to be low for a long time.”

Waste Connections, which accounts for about 65 percent of the garbage franchise in Coos County, takes recyclables to sorting centers in Portland.

In the past, those centers would pay between $80 to $90 a ton of material. Now they offer $20 to $30 a ton.

“And sometimes even less,” Smart said.

Prices dropped so low that the cost of shipping goods north was greater than what sorting centers were paying. But Waste Connections isn’t going to stop offering its service. If anything, it expects to do more because it will take up the slack from the Star of Hope and fly-by-night groups that do recycling when the market is especially good.

The state requires garbage companies to provide recycling free of charge, though they can subsidize costs with garbage fees. Smart said there aren’t any plans to ask cities to hike those rates even more than the usual amount for inflation, though he didn’t rule it out either.

“Unless it gets really bad, we will try and do what we said we would do,” he said.

Montez said Star of Hope still will collect wine bottles. The program also will continue to offer paper shredding services. But paper and cardboard recycling accounted for 8.2 percent of the vocational service program’s revenue. Montez said there aren’t any plans to make any staffing cuts, though it will be a challenge to find new sources of revenue.

The users of the recycling service also have to get used to a new system.

Montez said three of the biggest users of the recycling service were The Mill Casino-Hotel, The World and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s office.

BLM’s spokeswoman Megan Harper said the agency’s North Bend office now will send its recycling through Les’ Sanitation, though the Star of Hope workers will be missed.

“They did a great job and we are disappointed to see them go,” she said.

Smart said there may be fewer recycling options, but he doubts people will want to cut back on recycling.

“If a business calls Les’ Sanitation and says, ‘I need a recycling bin’ we will still provide it to them at no charge,” he said.