News

Lightning Round: It just got easier to be green

By Bill Moss, Published: December 20, 2012

Megan Piner wants us to win.And the news that the recycling center and transfer center will now take many more plastic recyclables might help Henderson County do that. Piner announced last week that the county can now take gable-top containers such as milk cartons.
"Because of the things that we're taking now, butter dishes, yogurt cartons, most of the plastic that you have in your trash, the change will significantly increase the amount of recycling that we take."
To the common question about whether it's better to recycle or throw out a peanut butter jar, she recommends filling it with warm water, letting it sit for a half hour, shaking it up and tossing it in the recycling bin. As for lids, yes, they're recyclable.
"What we try to tell people is we'd rather people recycle badly than not recycle at all," says Piner, the county's energetic recycling czarina. If you talk to her for five minutes, you can tell how committed she is. She loves talking trash.
Don't overcomplicate it, she says. "If you think it's recyclable, it probably is."
The reason that people can take a chance is because the first step in the waste stream — the consumer's self-sorting of recycling from garbage — has a backstop. All that stuff we toss into blue bags or blue recycling bins gets sorted by people on a sorting line at American Recycling of WNC in Candler.
"If it's not recyclable, they'll pull it out," Piner says. "We want people to know it's not confusing anymore."
It helps if people clean out the spaghetti jar before tossing it in the recycling bin but it's not imperative. "Highly soiled plastics go in a separate bin," she says.
As for the milk and orange juice cartons that can now go into the big recycling containers at the county recycling center, Piner points out that they go in with the plastics, glass and aluminum, not mixed paper or cardboard.
Even those not inclined to be green like to save some green in their pocketbook. It's simple economics.
We pay a landfill in South Carolina to take our garbage; the recycling center in Candler pays us for our discarded newspapers, milk jugs and beer cans. The more we pay to send garbage away, the higher our household garbage bill is going to be.
"We send 15 tractor-trailer loads of trash per day into the landfill in South Carolina," Piner says. "We're only doing about three to the recycling center. We make money off that recycling. We want to keep stuff out of the landfill. I want three going down to South Carolina and 15 going to the recycling center."
It's now a realistic goal, Piner says, for a household to have more recyclables than trash.
We've already jumped into Top 25. In 2001, Henderson County ranked 68th in recycling per capita; last year we climbed to No. 22. A top 10 ranking could be in our future if we turn green by going blue.

Contact editor Bill Moss at billmoss@hendersonvillelightning.com or 828.698.0407.