Conyers, Ga., Launches Curbside Recycling Program
The city of Conyers, Ga., and paper and packaging company Pratt Industries, which is headquartered in the city, have launched a new residential curbside recycling program.
The weekly collection uses 65-gallon carts and replaces one of the trash collection days. The new single-stream program, handled by Pratt Industries, began July 17 and is available to all residents within Conyers’ city limits.
The city and Pratt Industries also have partnered with the Curbside Value Partnership (CVP) to promote the program in the city. CVP is a national invitation-only program designed to help communities grow recycling participation through education.
Steve Thompson, CVP director, says, "CVP is also engaged with the entire state of Georgia on their statewide recycling education campaign. We look forward to seeing success in Conyers and believe that Conyers can help lead the state in improving the amount of recyclables collected."
Brad Sutton, Conyers director of Public Works and Transportation, says the city hasn’t had access to curbside recycling for more than a decade. "The recycling program will be as easy as possible for residents, allowing them to put all of their recyclables together in one large cart. And we’ve replaced one of our twice-weekly garbage collections with recycling to drive home the message to residents that much of your trash can be and should be recycled."
The partnership with CVP involves citywide communications to residents about the new single-stream recycling program and how easy it is to recycle. Pratt Industries donated the new 65-gallon recycling carts, the lids of which contain information about what can be recycled through the program.
Anthony Pratt, CEO of Pratt Industries, says, "It is always challenging to introduce a new and unfamiliar program into a community, that’s why we have chosen to partner with the Curbside Value Partnership to develop a strategy for communicating with residents. It is only natural that we concentrate our efforts in the state of Georgia, which has the second largest market for recyclables in the United States."
Allied Waste Develops Cost-Saving Plan for California County
Allied Waste, headquartered in Phoenix, has announced the details of a plan that it says would allow the 12 member communities of the South Bayside Waste Management Authority (SBWMA) in California’s San Mateo County to switch to single-stream recycling in less than a year, without the need for the $53 million new facility proposed by the SBWMA.
In a letter to officials of the 12 communities that make up SBWMA, Allied gave specifics of the plan under which state-of-the-art equipment would be installed in the existing Shoreway Recycling and Disposal Center facility in San Carlos, Calif., at a cost of $7.6 million.
The plan also calls for a 10,000-square-foot extension of the existing 50,000-square-foot Shoreway facility. The extension will cost an estimated $2 million, and Allied will allow another $1.4 million for additional site work, permits and environmental enhancements, bringing the total cost of the project to approximately $11 million.
"In March, the SBWMA estimated that switching to single-stream recycling would cost approximately $20 million," says Evan Boyd, general manager of Allied Waste of San Mateo County. "We didn’t submit our own plan at the time because that seemed fairly reasonable. But when their estimate grew to $41.5 million in April and finally to $53.9 million in June, we became concerned," Boyd says. "We knew the job could be done for far less, and we developed this $11 million plan."
The system, manufactured by Bulk Handling Systems (BHS) of Eugene, Ore., would be capable of handling the projected 80,000 tons of recyclables generated in San Mateo County per year. This would be more than enough to meet all the projected demands of the SBWMA, according to Allied Waste.
In addition, the new equipment could allow the SBWMA to offer single-stream recycling to commercial customers, potentially dramatically increasing the recycling levels in San Mateo County, Allied Waste asserts.
The new processing equipment from BHS could be fully operational in nine months from the time it is ordered. Even with the extension of the existing Shoreway Recycling and Disposal Center, the county could begin single-stream recycling as early as 2010, ahead of the SBWMA’s proposed schedule, according to Allied Waste.
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