Don’t Throw it All Away
By Tom Geddie
Old-time farmers everywhere used to save and reuse everything because it preserved hard-to-come-by cash. Many farmers, ranchers, and other thrifty folks continue to recycle today, although the habit became less common over the years as society temporarily became more “disposable.”
The truth is: recycling matters. On a personal or family level, it can save or make money. On a global level, the Natural Resources Defense Council cites several reasons, including these:
1) Using recycled materials reduces the need to chop down, extract, process, refine, and transport natural resources such as timber, crude petroleum, and ores. As a result, destruction of forests, wetlands, rivers and other places essential to wildlife is also reduced.
2) Making products from already refined waste materials reduces – and often avoids – the need for manufacturers to use toxic chemicals that are essential when using virgin materials.
3) Using recycled materials cuts down on energy use during manufacturing, dramatically reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants.
4) Recycling reduces the need for landfills. Toxic pollution from landfills – including cyanide, dioxins, mercury, methane, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, and lead – escapes into the air and leaches into groundwater.
5) Recycling creates jobs and promotes economic development. A study by the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission found that recycling added about $18.5 billion in value to the economies of 12 Southern states and Puerto Rico in 1995.
Clean and Caring
Today, recycling – and its kissin’ cousin, beautification – are slowly becoming habit again in Upper East Texas, from long-time activists to first-timers wanting to know how to do it. With the Texas Trash-Off Day statewide cleanup scheduled April 14 and Earth Day scheduled April 21, it’s time to look at some of the local resources that help reuse precious materials and “scrub up” the environment.
Three programs that have existed for at least 10 years help set the pace for regional recycling.
The Upper Sabine Valley Solid Waste Management District has recycled newspaper, cardboard, aluminum and tin cans, and many plastics since 1996. The district has four no-charge solid waste transfer stations in Wood County where people can take recyclables: one between Mineola and Quitman off Hwy. 37, one between Winnsboro and East Point on Hwy. 312, one between Pine Mills and Hawkins off Hwy. 14, and a large recycling center in Quitman. The district has curbside pickup in Hawkins, Mineola, Quitman, and Winnsboro, and sets up trailers where people can bring recyclables from 9 a.m. to noon the first three Saturdays of each month – first Saturdays in front of Winnsboro city hall, second Saturdays at Holly Lake, and third Saturdays (sponsored by the Rotary Club) at Wal-Mart in Mineola.
The state legislature created the program – paid for by local taxes – in 1991 to preserve groundwater and help dispose of trash.
“We get from 100 to 112 tons a month,” said Mary Jane Mathis. “We have a lot of dedicated employees who believe in recycling and help make this program work.”
Mary Jane said a lot of retirees in Wood County began recycling before they moved to the area.
“I have one grandchild and one on the way,” Mary Jane said, stating one reason that she believes in recycling for the future. “If you’ve ever been to a landfill, it’s getting to be a problem. We need to save the landfill space.”
A second “long-time” program is the City of Tyler’s.
As recycling director for the city, Kristi Flippin is also liaison for Keep Tyler Beautiful (KTB).
“The public is recycling more because recycling is the right thing to do,” Kristi said. “Things like aluminum cans really are good to recycle because it takes less energy to make cans from recycled products than from scratch.
The Keep Tyler Beautiful (KTB) program is, like many local community groups, part of the statewide Keep Texas Beautiful effort.
Kristi takes a deep breath and summarizes KTB like this: “Keep Tyler Beautiful does clean-up events; talks to churches, Boy Scouts, and high school students who need community service hours; spearheads the Adopt a Street, Adopt a Park, and Adopt a Spot clean ups; encourages recycling; and the last Saturday of every month some board members help children draw on cardboard as an educational program to kinda instill the idea of recycling.” Another KTB program is Tyler Against Graffiti that invites anyone who sees graffiti in Tyler to call 903.535.TAG2 with the location; the city will clean it up in 72 hours, weather permitting.
KTB also does an annual awards program to recognize outstanding recycling and beautification efforts.
A big part of Kristi’s day job is public education for a recycling program that picked up 447 tons of recyclables from October 2005 to October 2006, the last date for available statistics. That avoided landfill costs of $16,022, Kristi said.
The Tyler Recycling Collection Center accepts newspaper, magazines, advertising supplements, cardboard boxes of all sizes, clear plastic soda bottles and milk jugs, and clear and brown glass bottles and jars.
“We don’t take window panes or mirrors because those are just different types of glass,” Kristi said.
She said more and more new products are made with recycled materials. For example, plastic is made into carpet, countertops, and flooring.
Recycling Education
One of the regional recycling gurus is Marilyn May, executive director of Environmental Co-op in Kaufman County. With 18 years’ experience, recycling has become a passion for Marilyn, who is past president of the Recycling Alliance of Texas and the Dallas County Corporate Recycling Council, now called the North Texas Corporate Recycling Association.
Environmental Co-op contracts with the county, the cities of Terrell and Crandall, and the school districts in Kaufman and Terrell. Rusk State Hospital and Kemp ISD recycle electronics through the co-op.
“Mostly we’re an educational organization but we have in the past two years started a paper and cardboard recycling program for businesses,” Marilyn said. “We also have a container sitting beside the City of Terrell building that the community is welcome to use.”
The co-op, which picked up 395,771 pounds of paper and cardboard in 2006, was created 10 years ago to manage Kaufman County’s solid waste management plan.
“I’m kinda a person who doesn’t like waste,” Marilyn said. “I hate to see things go into landfill that don’t need to go there. You can recycle a good 70 percent of all of your trash. It’s usable commodity that has value.”
For example, Marilyn mentioned that fleece jackets, carpet, and other polyester products can be made from recycled soda bottles. She also said that the plastic on many new cars comes from recycled plastic milk jugs.
Marilyn helped the Kaufman County Law Enforcement Center put together a jail recycling program for cardboard and paper.
“Interest in recycling is picking up greatly,” she said. “We have calls constantly from people very interested in doing the right thing.”
Reusing Old Tires
One company that’s turned recycling into a business is Foster & Sons in Hawkins, which picks up old tires and shreds them for recycling, picking up 2,500 or more tires a day from retail tire stores, cities, and counties from Lufkin to Interstate 30 to the Louisiana border almost to Dallas.
Owner Robert Foster worked in commercial tire sales before he saw the business opportunity in recycling.
“Many of my customers had a problem getting rid of their junk tires,” Robert said. “After about a year and a half of research and getting permits, my son and I opened in July 2005 with a half-ton truck and a 16-foot flatbed trailer. Now we’ve got five buses – three of them converted to haul tires and two more being converted – and a tractor-trailer, a one-ton truck with a 30-foot gooseneck trailer and cage, and six 52-foot trailers.”
Foster & Sons also accepts old tires from individuals if there are enough tires to support the trip.
“It’s not cost effective go to go pick up a tire at someone’s house,” Robert said. “If they have less than 50, we ask them to bring them in to us or take them to a local tire store.”
Most retail tire stores accept old tires, charging a handling fee somewhere around $3; Foster & Sons charges $1 per passenger car or pickup tire.
Foster & Sons, in turn, sells the tires to companies that burn chipped-up rubber mixed with coal, and that find additional uses for the tires.
“There are starting to be companies in East Texas that use chipped-up rubber in the manufacturing process. Even though burning them with coal is beneficial – it keeps them out of landfill and ditches – recycling is the ultimate goal,” Robert said. “More companies are finding ways to use rubber mold injection or separation to break tires down into their components and reuse them in some way.” Chipped-up old tires also are beginning to be used in building roads, he said.
To take innovation one step further, Foster & Sons plans to use chips to help build an industrial park on 40 acres of old oil-drilling land the company owns adjacent to its plant.
“Drilling mud covered 8-20 acres of that land and we can’t even build parking lots on that, so we want to use the tire chips instead of gravel to create stability in the drilling mud, then cap that off with clay and gravel and use that land as commercial land,” Robert said.
The Reclamation Station
One of the newest and most diverse recycling programs is a seedling in Canton. Reclamation Station, which opened in 2004, includes a thrift store, antique store, and greenhouse in an old house, a small warehouse, and the surrounding grounds.
The greenhouse is used to make mulch and compost, and will lead to a worm farm and community garden, both of which fit into the recycling mission.
The thrift store is open every Thursday, Friday, and third Saturday, and offers clothing, furniture, and other donated items at greatly discounted prices.
Reclamation Station recently received a $10,000 grant from the Canton Economic Development Corporation to buy a baler for cardboard, plastic, and aluminum.
“We’re taking aluminum cans and any kind of scrap metal now,” Albert Bliss said. “Hopefully in the near future we’ll be taking newsprint and magazines, but before we can do cardboard and plastic with the baler we’ve got to have more equipment including a forklift with tractor tires to function on dirt, plus the money to pay somebody to run the baling operation.”
Reclamation Station also networks with the East Texas Crisis Center and with Road to Hope, said Albert and Lou Ellen Bliss.
Reclamation Station got its start in 2004, pledging to fill the gap left by the closing of East Texas Crisis Center’s thrift store to help low-income families and their children. The ETCC store closed after nearly 10 years because it could no longer afford to pay rent; the store sold clothing and household goods to the public and donated thousands of dollars of items each month to families in need, including crisis center clients, homeless families, and families who had to start over because their homes burned.
“The crisis center and other area non-profits, agencies, and churches send needy families to Reclamation Station with a voucher in hand, where they are assisted by station partners in getting their needs met,” said ETCC’s Theresa Leftwich.
“Many families served by the East Texas Crisis Center are forced to leave their homes because it is no longer a safe place to be,” Theresa said. “That often means sleeping in their cars, having left with nothing but the clothes they are wearing. When they are able to find housing, Reclamation Station means the difference in sleeping on the floor or in a bed, going to school without a coat, or having blankets to cover with at night.”
Clean Country Roads
Beautification – or at least cleanups – is becoming more common in Upper East Texas.
Many local communities are active with the Keep Texas Beautiful program. For a complete list of community programs, go to www.ktb.org/affiliates/list.html.
One of the newest beautification programs is in Van Zandt County, where County Judge Rhita Koches said 91 volunteers picked up 3.5 tons of trash on county roads last spring. Another 10 or so people are involved in education and training through the Council of Van Zandt County Communities, which doubles as the Keep Van Zandt County Beautiful board of directors.
Lettie Clark of Wills Point said the county has 16 teams actively picking up trash along county roads.
She singled out one volunteer – 14-year-old Wills Point Junior High student Taylor Townsend who lives on the edge of Lake Tawakoni.
“As chairman of the Lakeview Trash Tenders, Taylor has signed up 24 people,” Lettie said. “He’s also mowing some areas and he’s doing such a great job that people in Lakeview are beginning to police their own areas.”
Good News for Some
What does all of this mean for individuals?
For Gretta Davis in Canton, for example, it means she doesn’t have to drive as far to recycle. Every two weeks for about 10 years, she’s driven a trunkful of glass, plastics, paper, cardboard, and cans to Tyler; sometimes, she fills the back seat of her Volvo, too.
“It uses fewer resources if you’re able to recycle, and not just throw things away,” Gretta said. “We can’t keep putting the stuff in landfill. That’s ridiculous because we just don’t have the open space to devote to something that’s being trashed, turning it into landfill that’s not usable space. More and more people are starting to get on the bandwagon of recycling.”
