The Marshall County Refuse Department has been working to step up its game on recycling efforts in the county in the last year.
Recycling services have been offered to the general public for several years, with greenbox stations for select items such as newspaper, plastic and cardboard at each of the county’s nine satellite dump sites and at the main site on Benton-Briensburg Road. The department expanded its services on cardboard collection in the last year to local businesses; staff visit participating business throughout the week to pick up cardboard, in an effort to bolster county recycling efforts.
Recently, the department branched out further, opening the program to local industry. Thus far, the effort has been met with success. Estron in Calvert City was first aboard the bandwagon, and in May Ashland joined the effort as well. Arkema soon followed suit.
District 3 County Commissioner Rick Cocke said those efforts had nearly tripled the county’s intake of recyclable materials. Much of that increase, he attributed to Marshall County Refuse Board Chairman Marvin Stokes.
“When Chairman Stokes came aboard a year ago, there was like 43 places in the county,” Cocke said. “It’s no cost to the businesses in Marshall County, and Chairman Stokes has increased that to around 120 businesses. … It’s just a team effort between county government and the refuse (department) … It’s just community and government working together to protect the environment.”
Stokes, who Cocke said initiated the expansion to industry, said he’s been pleased with the response.
“We do go get the cardboard from the businesses,” Stokes said. “Because that way they don’t have to put it in the dumpster box. Their dumpsters is paid for by the business, they don’t have to put it in the dumpster. We save them money; it don’t go to the landfill, it goes to recycle. We recycle it. So we take care of the customer, we take care of the landfill and we recycle cardboard.”
Refuse Department Superintendent Troy English said he never realized the volume of wasted cardboard that a large facilitate could potentially generate until now. English said since the department began collecting from Ashland about three weeks ago, the plant had given 177.49 tons of cardboard over to be recycled. Numbers from Arkema were not yet available, as first collection had only begun Thursday.
It’s not a moneymaker for the county by any means, Cocke said, but it does help offset the cost of the program.
“It helps on the expense side of it, with that little bit of revenue,” Cocke said. “It gets those numbers – the expense and the revenue – a little closer together. Like I say, in the last year, those numbers have come a whole lot closer together than they were. They were a wider apart than some of us felt comfortable, but we’re heading in the right direction.”
Stokes said the county collects recyclable items and prepares those materials for transport and processing. Recyclables are sold to CRS Reprocessing Services in Louisville, which then become usable materials to be repurposed. Prices fluctuate according to market demand, he said, with prices averaging about $170 a ton for cardboard as of Thursday. Money received from sales flows back into the refuse department, Stokes said.
It’s a win-win for some local industry. Tim Whitaker, environmental manager for Ashland, said plant management had been looking for a way to do something better with the factory’s wasted cardboard for quite some time. When the opportunity arose to partner with the county, he said, it was a perfect fit.
“We heard about what you guys were doing … and we said, ‘put us on board,’” Whitaker said. “I set Patti (Johnson, environmental safety officer) on the case, and about two weeks later, we were recycling cardboard. … More cardboard than I thought; when we got into this I didn’t really realize how much we had. And I’ll tell you, the people have been really good about it.”
Additional volume will ultimately mean additional revenue for the county to maintain the program, but it’s about more than that, English said. Reducing the footprint for the good of future generations was more important, he said, and landfills are steadily running out of space. In Marshall County, he said as of now space was still adequate, but WastePath predictions indicated local landfill space would reach capacity in about 20 years. While English said the county had substantial public participation, recycling was something residents would have to choose to do for themselves.
“It’s a lifestyle choice,” English said. “In the bigger cities they’re getting to where if you don’t do that, because of the situation we’re in with landfills, they’re going to charge you more. If you don’t want to take that extra step to care about your community and care about your environment, they charge you more. We’ve not done that, it’s just your choice.”
While the county has had no discussion on implementing additional fees on residents who choose not to recycle, he said it could happen years down the road. Marshall County Recycling Department Supervisor John Miller had worked diligently on community outreach efforts to educate the public on the potential benefits of recycling, particularly with local youth.
“John has really worked good in the schools,” English said. “… That’s where you hit home with a parent or a grandparent, that their child says ‘why are we throwing that away? We can recycle that.’ … That’s the key, to have my son say … ‘Daddy, why are we throwing that away?’ … It’s continued to grow.”
To learn more about county recycling options or to enroll a business or industry in the recycling program, call 270-527-8437.