America Recycles
Day Nov. 15 Town, county and university combine
efforts
By Scott Nicholson
Nov. 15 is America Recycles Day, and local entities are
fishing in the local waste stream to land more reusable materials.
Recycling committee members
are, back row, Stephen Phillips, Tim Futrelle, Lisa Doty,
Andrew Edmunds; front row, Anna Erwin, Jennifer Maxwell,
Kendal McDevitt, Marsha Story (not pictured: Tracy Myhalyk).
Photo submitted
Watauga County’s recycling committee is a meeting on monthly
basis, coordinating various recycling programs to improve efficiency
and make recycling easier for everyone. The most significant new
effort is to compile all local recycling opportunities onto one
information sheet to distribute across the county.
The county sanitation department, Appalachian State University
and town of Boone’s public works department have been meeting
to help recycling make dollars and sense, reduce duplication of
efforts and align educational campaigns, including creating an
information sheet that helps people understand the various types
of materials and how and where they are collected.
“We all have similar goals to promote recycling,” said
Boone recycling coordinator Marsha Story. “We put our heads
together make it all flow better.”
The town of Boone contracts with Garbage Disposal Services Inc.
to haul both solid waste and recycling materials. The town turns
over its plastic to the county, where it is compressed and shipped,
and the county swaps out its glass to GDS and then it is hauled
to market.
Appalachian State University has its own recycling program, with
collection bins scattered across campus. Boone and ASU worked
together on a promotional packet for off-campus students, with
more than 1,600 distributed.
In addition to the installation of new recycling containers and
new “ASU Recycles” signs across campus, several campus
departments have collaborated for the Recycle at the Rock program.
On game days, football-game tailgaters are asked to use green
recyclable bags to collect their bottles, cans and clean cardboard
from their tailgating site. Once full, the bags can be left behind
and ASU staff will collect them from the tailgate lots and take
them to be properly recycled.
Volunteers assist ASU Recycles staff with the distribution of
the bags. Additionally, more than 50 recycling bins have been
placed throughout the stadium area. So far, the program has collected
12,620 pounds of material.
In celebration of “America Recycles Day,” the town of
Boone will be distribute reusable grocery bags at various grocery
stores on Friday Nov. 14.
“Another of my big pushes is to reduce the amount of plastic
bags we are using,” Story added.
Plastic shopping bags are notorious for flapping in roadside trees,
clogging rivers and posing threats to wildlife, and even with
recycling efforts in place at some stores, about 99 percent of
the bags end up in landfills or blowing free as litter. Even the
recycled bags are not cost-efficient, as there are fewer aftermarket
uses for the material.
In other clean-up efforts, the town of Boone has introduced recycling
to the biannual Boone Clean-Up Day and the Adopt-A-Street and
Adopt-A-Stream Programs. The garbage collected during each Boone
Clean-Up Day and Litter Sweep campaign averages 3,100 pounds.
During the last event, 500 pounds of recyclable material were
collected.
Watauga County has recently expanded its recycling program and
now accepts household batteries and compact fluorescent lights
at all 10 convenience centers. Pasteboard or “grayboard”
recycling has been added to the transfer station’s recycling
center and all types of electronics are accepted at the county’s
recycling center on Landfill Road in Boone.
Kendal McDevitt, who serves on the recycling committee, said the
composite information sheet will help with more coordination of
local efforts, and she expects the committee to continue exploring
ways to work together to keep waste out of the regional landfill.
For more information on recycling, call the town of Boone’s
Marsha Story at (828) 262-6230, Jennifer Maxwell at ASU at (828)
262-3190 ext. 108, or Watauga County’s recycling coordinator
Lisa Doty at (828) 265-4852.On the Web:
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