After initially being rejected for a grant to bring recycling carts to the city, Athens now has curbs lined with big, blue carts instead of small, red bins.
Ron Lucas, deputy service safety director for the City of Athens, decided Athens needed the carts about two years ago, because he wanted to people to recycle more and throw away less.
From Oct. 31 through Nov. 4, 3,600 carts were delivered predominantly to single-family homes throughout Athens. There are 4,500 utility accounts, which are the accounts to which people pay utility bills in Athens, and the majority of those accounts pay a recycling support fee of $3.50 per month.
“We’ve had curbside recycling for a number of years, but we just used this 18-gallon, red bin,” Lucas said. “Some people would use five red bins, so I thought, ‘Hey, let’s use a big cart.’ ”
A company called the Curbside Value Partnership, which became The Recycling Partnership, was offering a grant to communities looking to expand their recycling programs, he said.
Lucas said he thought the recycling carts were a good thing to have, so two years ago, Athens applied for a grant from the partnership worth about $125,000. The city's grant request was rejected.
“Late in 2015, early 2016, they came back and said that they had extra funds and were wondering if we were still interested in going after the recycling carts,” Lucas said.
Athens moved forward and got the legislation through the City Council to appropriate money to purchase 5,000 of the 64-gallon carts, and the city worked with the Recycling Partnership to get the educational campaign ready before they delivered the carts, he said.
“Cart delivery is still a thing that is active. We still have to figure out apartment complexes, and we still have to get carts back from people who did not want them and give carts to people that did (want one) and did not get one," Lucas said. "It is an effort to process, but there are 3,600 carts out there on the ground being used.”
There are many benefits of cart-based recycling, Lucas said.
“A big benefit is that you can do more (recycling),” Lucas said. “A lot of times when you have an 18-gallon bin, you fill it up and throw everything else away. With a 64-gallon bin, you have almost 3 1/2 times the capacity, so you can recycle more and throw away a lot less.”
The new carts also have lids and wheels.
“You can roll it instead of picking up a bin that can sometimes get weighed down. With the bin, it is just an open box — when you put it out and it rains, it is heavier and gets clunkier or blows around when it doesn’t have a lid on it,” Lucas said.
Bruce Underwood, executive director of Athens-Hocking Recycling Centers, said they are going to have to look further at the data of how many households recycle.
“We did do some data collection before the carts went out, and then we will have to do that at a time period, probably in the spring, with the same group of people,” Underwood said.
In other communities that have moved to a standardized cart system, the volume typically goes up because people are more likely to put the cart out on the curb every time versus just using a smaller bin, Underwood said.
Dana Yablon, a junior studying child, adult, family studies, thinks the carts are valuable.
"At the beginning, we threw away a lot of boxes," Yablon said. "Now we don't, and I feel like we are doing some good by recycling."
