End of the year hot topic: Changes in Chattanooga’s recylcing program
Until I got a letter in the mail yesterday, I totally forgot about the change in Chattanooga’s recycling program beginning January 1, 2007. The letter had three bullet points to point out what the city claims are improvements to the program:
- New curbside service areas and “Recycle Wednesday” schedule. (Instead of weekly pick up from our curbs, we get to accumulate our goods and wait until our neighborhood’s special Wednesday once a month.)
- Additional convenience centers. (Other areas, not just Warner Park, will be set up for us to go to if we can’t wait for the once a month pick up.)
- Clear guidelines for recycling. (Apparently half of the items picked up weekly have to go to the landfill because people are putting in non-recyclables out for pick up.)
Our family loves recycling. There is a kind of a thrill to put out our cardboard, old magazines, plastic bottles, and cans once a week. We always have several bags, at least 3, and put them out early on Tuesday mornings for pick up later that day.
We always have at least 3 bags a week. That means if we wait for our monthly pick up, they will be picking up at least 12 bags from our house. And that doesn’t include the glass that we have accumulating until we can’t stand it any more.
I am a bit angry about this change in our city’s services. There was a big bru-haha when the changes were being proposed, and the controversy is getting people upset again since the changes will go into affect this Monday. When I got home this afternoon my email box was full of letters from my neighborhood email list from people who are really not happy about these changes and confused over certain points, like when our “Recycle Wednesday” actually is.
Jeremy, over at strych9design, has already pointed out the savings the city will get from these improvements is about $0. I am upset that I will have to let it all accumulate at my house (12 bags!) or use gas in my car to go to one of these convenience centers (the one for my area isn’t that convenient).
However, even though I am aggravated at what I consider an inconvenience, I appreciate that recycling education is a part of their plan. I was shocked to learn that a lot of what people put out on the curb is sent to the landfill anyway, so maybe we Chattanoogans do need an education or at the very least, a refresher course.
According to the insert here are the approved recyclables:
- Cardboard
- All paper grades (no shredded paper)
- Plastic #1 or #2 (bottles with a neck)
- Aluminum cans
- Steel cans (only item that needs food residue washed out).
If you need more information on the changes in Chattanooga’s recycling program, call 311. And if you want to volunteer for this program, email volunteer @ recycleright DOT org (remove spaces, add appropriate puncuation).
Technorati Tags: Chattanooga, recycling, recycling program, recycling education
December 30th, 2006 at 8:31 pm
I forgot to complain about the clear-as-mud explanations of the ‘zones’. Glad you caught that one.
The recycling education is a good point. Putting stuff that can’t be re-used (didn’t the letter say that almost HALF of what was collected each week had to be sent to the landfill?) does drastically decrease the efficiency of the program.
I suppose it is possible that the efficiency of the program could be enhanced by getting people to stop putting out unusable stuff. But then again … we could have done that with the weekly pickup as well.
January 17th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
[...] As I posted before, Chattanooga has revised our recycling program. We no longer have weekly curbside pickup and now we have to wait until our specific Wednesday to have our plastics, cardboard, and paper picked up. Today was the first one for our neighborhood and I was so glad to get rid of everything. I predicted that we would have 9 to 12 bags of recyclables. I actually forgot to count, but we had a lot. There was a pile in our kitchen that had been collecting since December. We missed the last curbside pick up in 2006 (we were out of town) so we had more than what would be normal. [...]