Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05
January 18, 2007 issue
Watauga Recycles—But Not Enough
Story by Celeste von Mangan and Kathleen McFadden
Watauga County residents recycled more than 4,000 tons of glass, plastic, cans, cardboard, newspaper, tires, scrap metal and other recyclable materials last year, but dumped almost 50,000 tons of solid waste. While the recyclables brought $138,053.18 in revenue for the 2005-06 fiscal year, the county paid $2,045,331.34 to process and haul the solid waste away. Recycling obviously isn’t a big-money generator, but it does offset some of the cost of waste disposal. Nevertheless, the county still faced a net tab of close to $2 million for garbage.
The county cannot dispose of its own trash because the 22-acre landfill off Highway 421 has been closed since 1994 as a result groundwater contamination. Cleanup and correction cost $2.7 million dollars, and the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources continues to monitor the landfill semiannually.
So the county contracts with Waste Management to haul garbage to the Iris Glenn Landfill 60 miles away in Johnson City, Tenn. On any given day, eight to ten tractor-trailer loads of garbage leave Watauga County and go straight to the landfill.
“Someone is not recycling,” said Sanitation Department Administrative Assistant Donna Watson. “There is too much tonnage of solid waste. People do pretty well with recycling in this county, but if you look at the garbage, you can see a lot of cardboard and plastic bottles plus other recyclables.”
And that’s one of the principal reasons to recycle—not because of the money the county makes from selling recyclable materials, but because of the money the county saves by not trucking that stuff to Johnson City.
“The more we can divert, the less will go into the landfill,” said Assistant County Manager Deron Geouque.
The other compelling reason to take the time to put aside and sort your dog food cans, soda bottles and mustard jars is environmental. Landfills are filling up, and resources for creating packaging are growing scarcer. Recycling helps to save natural resources and energy.
All the convenience centers in the county offer recycling bins for cardboard, cans, newspaper, glass and plastic, and the county contracts with Recycle America of Winston-Salem to handle all of it except the glass.
The county has a different approach for glass. According to Geouque, the county used to haul glass to a recycling facility in Winston-Salem, but when that place closed, the closest location was in South Carolina, making glass hauling financially unfeasible. So the county worked out a deal with waste pickup company GDS. The country trades its glass to GDS for its cardboard.
“Cardboard is where we make our money in recycling,” Geouque said.
In addition, cardboard can be baled, making it easier to transport than glass, Geouque continued, and the county can store it until prices are most advantageous for making a sale.
However, the baling machine at the recycling center has been out of operation for the past several weeks, so the newspapers, plastic bottles, aluminum cans and cardboard boxes are piling up a bit higher than usual and moving out a bit more slowly.
“We move out two loads of recycling per week,” said Operations Services Director J.V. Potter. “We are hauling it loose right now until the baler is repaired which will be a few more weeks.”
The bins at the convenience centers aren’t the only recycling opportunities available in the county.
Another recycling option at the Transfer Station is the Swap Shop, a place where residents can drop off usable items that they no longer want for the use of other residents. Furniture, appliances and other items are often lined up in front of the Swap Shop.
Two special events in the county encourage additional recycling and proper disposal of troublesome items: Household Hazardous Waste Day, held each May and September, and Community Pride Week, held in May to coincide with Household Hazardous Waste Day.
During Household Hazardous Waste Day, residents can drop off the kinds of stuff that the Solid Waste/Recycling Department doesn’t generally accept: oil-based and latex paint, strippers, stains and varnishes, gasoline, oil and antifreeze, batteries, pesticides and herbicides.
During Community Pride Week, residents have the opportunity to take all sorts of heavy stuff that would usually involve a fee to the Transfer Station for free, including brush, rocks, cement and cement blocks, brick, asphalt, metal, furniture and appliances.
The point of these free community service offerings is to keep battered sofas out of roadside ditches and used oil out of creeks. It just makes sense.
Watauga County Recycling Stats
For fiscal year 2005-06 Watauga County residents deposited lots of recyclables at local convenience centers, accounting for 1,511.05 tons of the total 4,000 tons of waste recycled in the county last year. Here’s the breakdown.
Cardboard: 649.43 tons
Aluminum: 20.27 tons
Steel: 29.2 tons
Newspaper: 600.35 tons
Plastic: 38.5 tons
Green glass: 82.45 tons
Brown glass: 69.65 tons
Clear glass: 21.2 tons
Guidelines for Recycling
Residents can deposit glass, plastic, metal, cardboard and newspaper in the appropriate containers at all 10 of the county convenience sites.
Glass: Jars and bottles of clear, brown and green/blue glass are acceptable. No glass from windows, baking dishes or drinking glasses can be recycled.
Plastic: Acceptable plastics include clear plastic (no food wrap); translucent plastic, including milk jugs; opaque milk jugs and recycling numbers 1 and 2. No opaque plastic (other than milk jugs) or bottle caps can be recycled.
Metal: Tin cans, aluminum cans, foil and all-metal jar and bottle lids can be deposited. Metal strapping, iron, steel and other scrap metal not used in connection with food cannot be accepted.
Cardboard: Only corrugated cardboard is recyclable. Noncorrugated cardboard such as cereal and pizza boxes cannot be recycled and must be placed in the dumpsters as garbage.
Newspaper: Newspapers, magazines and telephone books are all acceptable, but hardback books are not.
What You Can Dump
Each county household is entitled to a solid waste allotment of 2,000 pounds per year, free of charge. Only bagged household trash can be put in the dumpsters at the container sites. All other materials must be taken to the scalehouse and weighed before dumping. The county charges the following fees for certain categories of material.
Demolition—$45 per ton—Brick, block, masonry, uncontaminated dirt, weeds, hardened concrete or cement
Metal/White Goods—$45 per ton—Non-food-related scrap metal, including sheet metal, lawn mowers, major appliances (washers, dryers, refrigerators, water heaters, dishwashers, freezers), bicycles and empty water tanks. Metal banding, fence materials, and wire do not go in the metal pile. White goods are accepted at no charge.
Brush—$35 per ton—Wood that is untreated, unpainted, unstained, unvarnished (no particle board or plywood); leaves (not to be left in bags); pallets; and wooden cable spools. These items can contain nails; they must not contain chemicals.
Carcasses—The Watauga County Transfer Station accepts animal carcasses for burial, but the staff needs to be notified. The fee is $5 for an animal under 100 pounds and $25 for an animal over 100 pounds.
Tires—Tires are accepted at no charge. They can be dumped with the rims in them, but must be neatly stacked in the trailer provided for their disposal.
Solid Waste—$45 per ton—Everything that does not fit one of the above categories except for the items the department does not accept at all: liquids, including paint, oil and insecticides; hazardous waste; toxic waste; and gas tanks.