Madisonville’s iRecycle
Working for a green tomorrow
By: Josh Stewart
The City of Madisonville’s iRecycle program officially started on October 1st, 2012. Since then the City of Madisonville has been providing free recycling pickup to any household within a mile of the city limits that choose to sign up for the program. Since the recycling program has been instated, 75 tons of solid waste materials have been diverted from the county landfill located in White Plains. However, only about 2400 households of the 8,077 eligible are recycling and 600 tons of solid waste is generated in the city each month. Given the circumstances and extraneous costs, the iRecycle program requires a lot of financial resources. Mr. Robert Janes supervises the recycling center and transfer station run by the city’s Department of Sanitation. He says that currently only 28% of eligible residents are recycling, but 60% is needed to keep up with operating costs.
“It is to every resident’s advantage to participate in the recycling program,” Janes says. The iRecycle program provides households with free, single-string curbside recycling. Recyclable items like plastic, paper, and cardboard can be placed into a single bin; no sorting is necessary and pickup occurs every other week. You can request a recycling tote to be delivered to your household from the Madisonville city website.
Each year, approximately one billion trees are cut down. If all newsprint was recycled, 250 million trees could be saved from becoming a statistic. Studies show that 13,000 pieces of paper are thrown away, not recycled, per capita. Mr. Janes says “People take recycling lightly. They shouldn’t.” Plastic makes up the bulk of the
waste needing disposal in Hopkins County. In fact, plastic bottles are the most used products in the U.S. If more people would do their part in reducing and recycling their waste, many experts say that waste management could be reduced to manageable levels.
Recycling has local effects as well. Madisonville’s municipal waste is transported to the county landfill for disposal. It costs the city around $14 per cubic foot of waste disposed. These expenses can directly affect taxpayers. The more waste there is to be disposed of, the more the city has to pay to dispose of it. In order to compensate for this, tax rates of residents are adjusted to make up for these expenses. Effectively, the more garbage disposed, the higher tax rates become. This can also work conversely. Should more waste be diverted from the landfill through recycling, less garbage is dumped. This means that the city pays less for waste disposal because of decreased volume. Therefore, tax money previously used to fund garbage disposal can now be used for alternative purposes or given as rebates to taxpayers. In addition, landfill space is finite. It is crucial to maintain disposal levels to a manageable level. The more garbage disposed, the faster the landfill reaches capacity. This can mean adverse environmental effects and increased disposal rates. Reducing the amount of garbage deposited is a sound solution to all these problems, and recycling directly reduces the amount of waste sent to the landfill.
Many major metropolitan areas have incentive or mandatory recycling programs instituted. The city of San Francisco, California for example requires all residents and households to separate their solid waste from recyclables and compostable material under the San Francisco Mandatory Recycling and Composting Ordinance. Other large urban areas offer tax incentives and deductions for participating in recycling programs. Janes says that if the current trend of low recycling in the city continues, residents may either be required to recycle, or the iRecycle program itself may be reprieved of funding. “Public awareness and participation is crucial to making Madisonville’s recycling program a success,” Janes says. “It’s crucial for the younger generations to advocate for recycling and change current trends, parents are more likely to recycle if their children want to.”
It’s evident that Madisonville’s iRecycle program is a benefit to Madisonville, its residents, and the entire county as a whole. Recycling is a key step on the path to a sustainable future that few people fail to realize the need for. Changes must be made if such a goal is to be achieved, and those changes start with public awareness and education. Recycling is becoming more manageable, affordable, and convenient as participation increases, and people must realize that it very well might be the key to unlocking a “green” future.