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NEWS
County pursues recycling program
Barboursville residents have used this recycling bin since June for their paper and plastic waste.
Purchase this photoHUNTINGTON -- If everything goes according to plan, Cabell County will have a new recycling program by September.
The Cabell County Solid Waste Authority has applied for a $20,000 grant with the West Virginia Solid Waste Management Board to provide eight recycling drop-off locations across the county. The state board will announce its grant recipients in July.
A local commercial hauler would provide bins at each location and pick up recyclables -- glass, plastic, aluminum and cardboard -- two times per week. Goodwill Industries of KYOWVA would join the effort by placing recycling bins for paper at each location.
Currently, few recycling options exist in Cabell County.
"The exciting thing about this proposal is that people in this county are wanting to recycle," said Ralph Taylor, director of Cabell's Solid Waste Authority. "We want to create a community of recyclers, and this would put us a step closer to achieving that."
Four of the bins would be placed within the city of Huntington, while four others would be placed at locations in Cabell County, Taylor said. The locations have not been chosen yet, but they would be at spots that people frequent on a weekly basis, such as a grocery store, he said.
The commercial hauler consulting with the Solid Waste Authority has guaranteed that all recyclable materials thrown into the bins will be recycled, Taylor said. It also won't require residents to sort their glass, plastic and aluminum, he said.
The grant would support the recycling program for one year. If there's sufficient participation, the Solid Waste Authority could lobby Huntington and Cabell County leaders for permanent funding, Taylor said.
The city of Huntington does not offer a recycling program. It hauls residents' household garbage to a landfill in Cannonsburg, Ky. Private hauler Allied Waste picks up household garbage in rural parts of the county. It offers a curbside recycling service for a monthly fee.
"For every truckload of materials that we would be recycling with this new program, that's a truckload of garbage that Huntington doesn't have to pay a tipping fee for," Taylor said. "The residents in the county, meanwhile, could take their recyclables to a location in their community free of charge.
"It's really a win-win situation for everyone."
Recycling opportunities in Cabell County are sparse. In addition to Allied Waste's curbside service, the village of Barboursville, Rumpke Recycling and Goodwill Industries provide a recycling bin in Barboursville for paper and plastics.
Goodwill also accepts paper products and old computers at its collection center on West 19th Street in Huntington and supplies 18 schools in Cabell and Wayne counties with paper recycling bins. The Cabell County Courthouse, Huntington City Hall and several area businesses also participate in Goodwill's paper recycling program.
Huntington has struggled in the past to implement recycling programs. It received a grant in the early 1990s for a trial curbside service offered to about 5,000 homes. The program was scrapped after four months because the startup costs were "outrageous" and there wasn't enough volume to warrant the transportation costs of taking the recyclables to market, said Don Kleppe, a project manager for Huntington's Department of Development and Planning. Kleppe coordinated the city's recycling efforts in the 1990s.
The city then offered a drop-off service similar to the proposed program. That failed as well, because people used the recycling locations as illegal dump sites, Kleppe said. He attributes the problem to the city closing its landfill about the same time.
"We also had contamination issues," he said. "People were trying to be helpful, but they were throwing glass windows into the glass pile, magazines into the newsprint pile and little Johnny's plastic bicycle seat into the plastic pile."
Kleppe thinks a drop-off program would run smoother now because the public has become more educated about recycling during the past 15 years.
And unlike 15 years ago, there is a groundswell of support from the public for a recycling program, said Stacy McChesney, co-founder of Create Huntington's weekly Chat 'N' Chew forums. The volunteer-driven group has brainstormed numerous ideas since the latter part of 2008, "but recycling is a tough nut to crack," she said.
"We learned it's very hard to find a company that recycles 100 percent of what it collects," McChesney said. "Since then, we've set out to communicate, educate and build a consensus for a recycling program."
If the Solid Waste Authority receives grant funding, Create Huntington will promote the program through a website, www.recyclehuntington.com, McChesney said. The group already has set up a Facebook page by the same name.
