www.RecyclingMakesSense.org
WTI was gracious enough to offer a HHW collection for residents of Columbiana County again this year. The District benefits from HHW collections and because Columbiana County has the largest population, the cost for such a collection is highest in Columbiana County. WTI held this collection at no cost to the District. This was combined effort with several agencies cooperating. WTI's license does not permit them to accept mercury, which includes fluorescent lamps and compact fluorescent lamps ("CFL"). The District agreed to contract with a lamp processor to collect fluorescent lamps. The East Liverpool City Hospital col- lected mercury thermometers and gave out a free digital thermometer for every mercury thermometer collected. Because WTI limited the collection to materials that they were able to process at their facility, they were able to keep their out-of-pocket costs down. The District paid $93.50 for the lamp collection. During the collection, a total of 120 cars dropped off HHW materials and about 11,000 pounds of materials were collected. The District also used grant money to advertise for the event, placing 14 ads in the County's three largest newspapers.
The District offered a collection for all District residents in Harrison County. The District contracted with WTI (the low bidder) to collect typical hazardous material, including mercury and lamps. As in the past, the District did not collect Latex paint, lead acid batteries or used motor oil. Latex paint is not hazardous and there are many outlets for lead-acid batteries and motor oil.
The District placed 13 ads in various Harrison and Carroll County Newspapers in the three weeks prior to the event. Turnout was low, however, with only 28 cars coming to the event. A total of 1,721 pounds of material was collected.
Education Program
The Board decided that having Dr. Matthews provide educational programs year round on a part-time basis would be more beneficial to all three counties and that proved to be true. Dr. Matthews more than doubled his 73 programs held in 2007. This year he conducted 194 presentations and promoted recycling and waste reduction to over 4,500 people throughout the District.
Working with individuals fulfilling community ser- vice hours through the court system, Dr. Matthews oversaw litter cleanup activities in every township in Columbiana County, thus cleaning up over 200 miles of roadways, collecting 315 bags of material totaling 9,450 pounds. More than half of this material was recycled in a District recycling site closest to the cleanup instead of ending up in a landfill.
Dr. Matthews' programs have been an integral part of the increase in recycling rates in each county.
Full-Time Electronics Collection
The District has been receiving increased calls for recycling of electronic items. In addition, several electronics vendors have contacted the District about ongoing collections. With the exception of CRT- style TVs, the majority of electronics have value. Because they have value, electronics recycling companies have offered to pick up electronics from the District at no cost to the District, with the exception of TVs, which will cost the District $5.00 each.
Christmas Tree Recycling Down in 2008
The District only collected about 200 trees throughout the entire District in 2008. The District has been promoting alternate uses for live Christmas trees, such as wildlife habitat, for many years. Many of the tree growers in the area have been selling live, balled trees. In addition, the look and feel of newer artificial trees has gotten more realistic during the past several years, so residents may be purchasing artificial trees instead of cut trees. Whether the District receives 200 or 2,000 trees each year, we are keeping trees out of the landfills.
Payment For Recyclables, New Recycling Facility and Recycling Containers
In 2008, the District re-bid the recycling processing and transportation. Four proposals were received for processing recyclables. Lewis Refuse submitted the best proposal to pay the District for recyclables; this is the first time since the 1990's that the District has received money for recyclable materials. Once Lewis Refuse was awarded the contract for processing recyclables from the District, he built a small Material Recovery Facility ("MRF"). He also expanded the number of materials that can be recycled at the District sites. The District can now accept plastics 1- 7. However, we cannot recycle #6 "Styrofoam".
The District received three bids for transportation of the recycling containers. Lewis Refuse was the low bidder for both the Carroll and Harrison sites (which use roll-offs) as well as the Columbiana County sites. The Columbiana County sites are served using contractor-owned containers. Since the District was not satisfied with the lids on the original containers, Lewis Refuse proposed to change the containers to a low-profile 6- cubic yard container with four 36" horizontal lids (compared to the 70" slanted lids on the original containers). The Columbiana County residents have been very satisfied with the new lids.
New Recycling Sites Added, One Site Moved
The District added two new recycling sites in 2008. One at Beaver Creek State Park and one at Lake Mohawk. The Lisbon recycling site, which has been behind the Beverage Barn since it opened in 1994, was moved the Columbiana County Educational Service Center. The Lisbon site was one of the original four District recycling sites.
Recycling at the Carroll County fair was not as successful as it was in 2007. Part of the problem may have been due to the fact that the recycling and garbage roll-off con- tainers were not delivered to the fairgrounds until the end of the first day of the fair. Vendors setting up their stands had no place to take their cardboard. After the initial problems with the roll-offs, recy- cling was strong. Two 20-yard roll-offs were filled with cardboard and one 20-yard roll-off was filled with commingled recyclables.
The Columbiana County fair recycling also had some operational issues. The County purchased fifty 95- gallon toters in 2007 and labeled all the toters "cardboard only". It was discovered that approxi- mately 30% of the toters had the "Cardboard Only" labels removed and therefore garbage was placed into the toters with the cardboard. The upside to the Columbiana County fair recycling was that Lewis Refuse was the contractor and they were able to take all the material in the toters back to their recycling facility and were able to process the cardboard and commingled materials.
Scrap Metal Collection Strong In Cadiz -Appliance Recycling
Scrap metal prices were up in 2008 and the District did not expect to get much scrap metal at the 2008 collections. There are no scrap yards in Harrison County, so with the price of fuel, residents did not want to travel to adjacent counties to recycle their scrap metal. As a result, Harrison County residents brought enough scrap to fill two 48-foot open-top trailers. There are several scrap yards in Carroll and Columbiana counties and due to high scarp prices, limited amounts of scrap metals were collected during those collection events.
The District also changed the location of the Carrollton collection to D&D TV & Appliance. This was a good central location that made it easier to process the electronics because the staff could use D&D's dock. It was raining on the day of the Carrollton collection, so it was nice to be inside D&D's warehouse.
As was expected, the District received a lot of tires at the collections. One trailer load of tires was collected at both Cadiz and Salem. The Carrollton collection had one and a half trailer loads of tires. The District has been holding tire collections since 1998 and we still get a significant volume of tires. Electronics recy- cling was also in high demand, with TVs being the majority of electronics recycled. DTV will be coming in 2009 and people are starting the changeover. The District received 28 pallets of electronics at Cadiz, 26 pallets at Carrollton and 37 pallets at Salem.
Grant Money Received By The District
The District worked with East Liverpool to submit a grant application for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Recycling & Litter Prevention's Community Development Grant. The District was awarded a $100,000 grant. The City established a non-subscription curbside recycling program for all residents of the city, scheduled for implementation in 2009.