America Recycles Day 2009

Submitted by the Dalton-Whitfield Regional Solid Waste Management Authority

The Daily Citizen Dalton, Georgia

America Recycles Day is a national nonprofit effort committed to supporting local and national activities and events to promote the social, environmental and economic benefits of recycling and to encourage more people to join the movement toward creating a better natural environment.

It encourages you to pledge to make a personal commitment to step up your recycling efforts over the next year in some way. Visit the America Recycles Day Web site at www.americarecyclesday.org and join millions of other Americans pledging to recycle more this year.

As our America Recycles Day activity, Dalton and Whitfield County are presenting a three-part series of articles on the many environmental and economic benefits of recycling and to publicize the numerous opportunities to recycle here in our community. Hopefully you will learn some new aspects of recycling that will help motivate you to either keep up your current recycling efforts or start recycling today. Even if you can’t personally solve the world’s environmental problems, recycling is one activity you can do on a personal level that truly does make a difference in our environment.

Research clearly indicates that manufacturing new products from recycled materials not only reduces air, land and water pollution, but also saves energy.

A great example is the energy saved in the aluminum industry. Making aluminum cans from raw materials requires the mining of bauxite, shipping it to the U.S., and delivering it to the manufacturing site. Compare that process to simply delivering cans collected in recycling programs to the mills, melting them and producing new cans. The aluminum industry estimates that by making new cans out of old ones they reduce their energy consumption by 95 percent. This same basic principle applies to all of the other recycling commodities – less energy is required to collect, transport and manufacture products from recycling programs than to use raw materials.

The National Recycling Coalition, in conjunction with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, developed an “Environmental Benefits Calculator” that estimates some of the environmental benefits based on the number of tons of the most commonly recycled items. We have plugged in the 2008 totals (17,859,260 pounds) collected in Dalton and Whitfield County and processed by the Dalton-Whitfield Solid Waste Authority to see the environmental impacts.

ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFIT ESTIMATED AMOUNTS

Trees Saved 8,368 trees

Reduction in Green House Gas Emissions 3,821 tons

Equivalent number of cars kept off road for one year 2,517 cars

Energy saved equivalent to power a home for one year 2,410 homes

Reduction in airborne and water pollutants 2,039 tons

Water saved by just the carpet tons recycled 639,796 gallons

Additionally, some specialized items were recycled in Dalton and Whitfield County last year. They are important materials that have the potential to pollute our environment if not disposed of properly. We will discuss our Household Hazardous Waste Facility in the next article.

COMMODITY AMOUNT RECYCLED HAZARDOUS COMPONENT

Electronics 10.23 tons Arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium

Batteries 4.9 tons Lead, mercury

Waste Oil 49.25 tons 1 qt can contaminate 250,000 gallons of water

Tires 180.25 tons Mosquito and other vermin habitat

Recycling, by its very nature, saves natural resources. Instead of withdrawing natural resources from the Earth to produce products, we simply take the old ones already created and make them into new products. Except for paper, all the other items can be remanufactured over and over again without losing their essential properties.

We also have some really important economic benefits from strong recycling programs. There are 15 paper mills in Georgia and all of them use some recycled fiber. Nine of them use recycled newspaper exclusively to make their products. These mills represent 25,000 jobs with an annual payroll of $1 million. Almost one-third of all the plastic bottles recycled in the United States gets recycled right here in northwest Georgia and made into carpet. Another benefit - one barrel of oil (42 gallons) is saved by recycling just 3,700 two-liter bottles.

We lose revenues when we send perfectly good recyclables to the landfill and bury them instead of getting them into the recycling stream to be used as feed stock in the manufacturing process. The Georgia Department of Community Affairs did an exhaustive waste characterization study of our landfills in 2004 and discovered that approximately 2.6 million tons of recyclables were going into our landfills in the state of Georgia. In addition to the valuable landfill space used to bury things that had other places to go, the lost revenues on those recyclables were calculated at $250 million based on market prices at the time. Talk about wasted resources!

We sincerely hope that this information will better help you understand that recycling affects us all in positive ways and has the true potential of offering us, as individuals, something to do that definitely generates positive impacts on our community, our nation and our world. So the next time you get ready to dispose of something, remember that you could probably recycle it instead. For complete lists visit www.cityofdalton-ga.gov (click on Departments, then Public Works, then Recycling Instructions) and www.dwswa.org (click on recycling). The city and county programs will be discussed in depth in the next two articles.

Remember that "recycling is smart, so please do your part, and don't waste your chance to recycle.

Editor's note: Watch The Daily Citizen Web site for the next two articles.

Whitfield restoring creeks, wetlands

By Kelly Jackson
Chattanooga Times Dalton Bureau

DALTON, Ga. -- On property off Tilton Road in southern Whitfield County, an intermittent stream meanders through a field bordering the Conasauga River.

"You can imagine (that) literally this was just a big muddy pond; the cows would walk in and out of it to drink," said Norman Barashick, executive director of the Dalton-Whitfield Solid Waste Management Authority.

That was before the authority's restoration efforts as part of its mitigation bank program. The drainage area that once was a cow pond is now a flowing stream. Around the stream are native plants and trees that will one day keep secret its very existence.

"The overall goal of this project is natural growth," said Dirk Verhoeff, environmental manager with the authority. "We're supposed to help it along, but in time it's going to take care of itself."

The authority owns and operates the Conasauga River Mitigation Bank, established in June 2005. Through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers mitigation bank program, independent agencies can preserve and restore streams and wetlands in exchange for credits. Those credits can be sold to developers whose projects will impact streams and/or wetlands.

Mr. Verhoeff said that to qualify for the mitigation bank, a project must include at least 50 percent restoration.

Alan Miller, a section permits chief with the Corps of Engineers' Savannah District, said developers whose projects affect wetlands can mitigate the impacts on or off-site, buy credits from a land bank to offset the impacts or pay an in-lieu fee to the Georgia Land Trust to buy aquatic resources.

Mr. Miller said the mitigation bank program, which was created about 15 years ago, is "very robust" in Georgia. There are about 60 active banks across the state.

Mr. Barashick said the Corps of Engineers determines how many credits a mitigation bank has and how many credits a developer will need to offset an impact.

The officials said the total number of credits for any given bank is a proprietary secret and the value can't be assessed because it fluctuates.

County Commission Chairman Mike Babb, who is also an authority board member, said local governments benefit from having credits available. He said the city and county have purchased credits for development.

Commissioner Mike Cowan said the local mitigation bank is "win-win."

"You have to make the improvements to the environment to be qualified to receive the credit, so just the fact that you're improving the environment is a positive," he said.

FISH SPECIES FOUND IN STREAM RESTORATIONS:

• Green sunfish
• Bluegill
• Warmouth
• Red shiner
• Golden shiner
• Bullhead minnow
• Creek chub
• Eastern mosquitofish

RIVER MITIGATION BANK:

• 3 tracts of property, about 120 acres
• 200-foot riparian corridor preserved or restored along about 2 miles of the Conasauga River
• 150-foot riparian corridor preserved or restored along both sides of about 2 miles of existing and constructed waterways
• 3,700 linear feet of stream restoration
• To date the authority has sold about 20 percent of potential credits for about $1 million.
• The bank's primary service area consists of four watersheds within the Coosa River Basin. This includes portions of Bartow, Chattooga, Cherokee, Dade, Fannin, Floyd, Gilmer, Gordon, Murray, Pickens, Polk, Walker and Whitfield counties.

Sources: Dirk Verhoeff, Norman Barashick

ON THE WEB:

Learn more about the mitigation bank program at www.sas.usace.army.mil.

Paper recycling in place at every school

 Staff Photo by Tim Barber:

Michael Foxx, right, Recycling Center operations manager at the Dalton-Whitfield Regional Solid Waste Management Authority, punctures a plastic bottle as Matthew Ryerson, 3, and North Whitfield Middle School teacher Jill Ryerson listen for air to be released at recent open house.

By Kelly Jackson
Chattanooga Times Dalton Bureau

DALTON, Ga. -- Recyclin' Ben is becoming more popular in Whitfield County, Dalton and area private schools.

Last November, the improved mascot showed up on the side of a new recycling truck bought by Dalton-Whitfield Regional Solid Waste Management Authority. This year, the authority started picking up mixed-paper recycling at every school in the county, so Ben's getting out and about more than ever.

"We were able to set it up to be a rolling billboard," said Norman Barashick, executive director of the authority.

On Thursday, the authority held an open house to introduce parents, teachers and students to its "Target Recycling" program and other educational programs available for students, including tours at the facility.

Residents who attended the open house had the opportunity to tour the authority's Materials Recovery Facility, nicknamed the "Murf." Mr. Baraschick said the 40,000-square-foot recycling operation opened in 2001.

"Our programs have continued to expand," he said.

Cassie Gallman, a fifth-grade student at New Hope Elementary School, attended the open house and said she's happy to have recycling in her school "because it helps the ecosystem."

Shayla Byrd, a third grader at New Hope, said she was impressed to see all the different materials made from recyclables at the center. She was especially impressed by the bathroom tile made out of recycled toilet seats.

Harvey Levitt, operations manager for the authority, said the agnecy already was picking up recycling at about 25 percent of schools, but county-wide school recycling is "a new program."

"We are in 30 some-odd schools and the 30 schools accommodate 20,000 students," he said.

The authority has implemented a competition and will award schools that have the most recycling per student. A top recycling school will be recognized three times throughout the year, he said, while the top three recycling schools will be recognized on an annual basis.

The authority has worked to have recycling in schools throughout the county for a number of years, he said, but only recently had the $400,000 needed to purchase the new truck and more than 200 containers for all the schools.

To pay for the truck, the authority used a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers program in which developers buy credits to offset any negative environmental impact from their developments.

Money from those credits paid for the recycling truck, Mr. Barashick said.

Dalton: Schools embrace recycling

 STAFF PHOTO BY KEVIN CUMMINGS:

Southeast High School special education students put cardboard and paper in the school's recycling bins. Special ed teachers at Southeast use recycling to teach job skills and environmental awareness.

By Kevin Cummings
Chattanooga Times Dalton Bureau

DALTON, Ga. — In the halls and offices of Southeast Whitfield High School, trees are protected from the chainsaw.

No trees actually stand within the school’s interior, but plenty of recycling boxes and cans for paper, plastic and aluminum are scattered through the building. Students deposit the recyclables and special education students pick the materials up and sort them twice a day.

Since the school started its “Raider Recycle” program in 2004 under educators Tom Brown and Rhonda Kelley, the school has saved 813 trees, according to the Dalton Whitfield Regional Solid Waste Management Authority, which partners with Whitfield County schools to encourage recycling.

Last week, in conjunction with America Recycles Day on Wednesday, the Solid Waste Authority honored four local schools for recycling more than 109,000 pounds in 2007-08 school year: Dawnville Elementary and Southeast, Northwest and Dalton high schools.

“This program is very special to me, as I believe that to get the community to recycle, we must first start with the children,” said Bridget Sanford, Solid Waste Authority recycling coordinator.

Special education teachers Lorie Harden and Kevin Kettenring said the 24 students who participate in the collection of the recyclables learn a job skill, too.

“We do it as a job-readiness skill,” Mrs. Harden said. “Most industries recycle and we teach them about sorting and how to properly prepare something to be recycled.”

Mr. Kettenring said he’d like to see more schools in the county participate in an outlined recycling program.

“When you think of all the paper and waste products that come out of 600 or 700 people under one roof, it just makes sense,” he said.

'Treecycling' a year-round service in Whitfield County

By Erin Fuchs
Chattanooga Times Dalton Bureau

DALTON, Ga. -- Still hanging on to that old Christmas tree?

Whitfield County will recycle those pines and firs for free -- even if you hold off until spring, according to recycling educator Bridget Sanford.

"This gives residents the opportunity to do the environmentally conscious thing with their trees," said Ms. Sanford, who works with the Dalton-Whitfield Regional Solid Waste Management Authority.

On Saturday, Keep Dalton/Whitfield Beautiful hosted its Bring One for the Chipper event.

Residents brought their Christmas trees -- stripped of lights, ornaments and tinsel. The evergreens were then fed into a giant chipper, which ground the trees into soil-enriching mulch. That mulch, in turn, is free to residents who want to use it.

But Saturday wasn't the only day for treecycling. Georgia banned yard waste from public landfills in 1996. To encourage residents not to break the law, Whitfield County has four year-round drop-off points for brush and lawn trimmings.

"If they have a tree that falls in their yard, it can be brought throughout the year," Ms. Sanford said.

Some residents didn't realize they could bring in their trees before the Chipper event.

"We had three dead, brown trees show up, and it was where people had held on to them for the year," Ms. Sanford said.

Free mulch has been in high demand. For information on picking up mulch, call the Waste Management Authority at (706) 277-2545.

More than 6,000 tons of mulch was given to county residents in 2007, Ms. Sanford said.

"This year, we actually ran out of mulch a couple times," she said.

The historic drought, and an outdoor watering ban in much of North Georgia, has underscored the importance of mulching, according to many gardening experts. Mulching helps retain moisture.

But Howard Burnett, a retired forester and Dalton resident, cautions against over-mulching.

"When people think of mulch, they think more is better. Two to four inches of mulch is plenty," Mr. Burnett said. "You want to keep moisture in, but you don't want to keep oxygen out."