By PHIL STEPHENS, guest columnist
The past couple of years at the Brown County Recycle Center have been a whirlwind but a good whirlwind. Since my last column, our tonnage intake numbers have been excellent.
For 2015 and 2016 combined, we took in 2.4 million pounds of recycled materials. This number does not include the 9,500 tires we collected on our tire recycling days in May.
Additionally, we took in 20,279 pounds of unwanted electronics, which included 740 TVs and computer screens.
On our paper shredding days, we took in 26,520 pounds of office paper as well.
For 2017, our total year-to-date intake is at 392 tons, which puts us up 10 percent over 2016.
I feel the main reason for these types of impressive numbers is an ever-increasing awareness of the need to keep our community clean for our children, our property values and the significant tourist business that comes to our county.
The recycle center wishes to thank all the volunteers, households, local volunteers and Cummins Engine Co. volunteers who contributed to this massive effort as well.
Since my last little article, the recycle center has picked up off the side of our beautiful Brown County roads six sofas, three loveseats, three mattresses, six box springs, five chairs, two refrigerators, one dishwasher, nine tires, 18 bags of garbage and seven TVs.
I will continue to urge the people who do this to please stop. You are only hurting our community, our tourism and our property values. If you have something like that you wish to get rid of, please call us and we’ll work with you. Fair enough?
Please mark your calendars for the following special recycling event days. On Saturday, Sept. 23, we will take any and all paper documents for shredding. It will be in our front parking lot from 9 a.m. to noon.
Then from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday, Oct. 28 will be our DEA-sponsored drug take-back program and electronics recycling. Drug take-back is in the drive-through, and the electronics recycling is in the far back of the property. Most of the electronics recycling is at no charge; however, there will be a charge for any screen-type item. Call the center to see what that charge will be.
Remember, too, the center takes bagged trash (up to 55-gallon bags) for only $2. This comes out much cheaper than a monthly pickup, so please consider us for your disposal needs.
This past April, the recycle center was involved in the Great American Clean-up for Brown County. The program was sponsored by Keep America Beautiful. It was organized by the Keep Brown County Beautiful organization with Allison Shoaf of the Brown County Soil & Water Conservation District spearheading it. Utilizing more than 30 volunteers from Brown County and Cummins, we were able to collect more than 60 large bags of litter from around Nashville and several targeted roads in the county.
As usual, I want to recognize our Adopt-A-Road teams. In 2016 alone, they picked up a staggering 1,012 bags of litter alongside Brown County roads.
The Keep Brown Beautiful organization organized the pickup of a whopping 361 bags of litter off our roads in 2016 and 121 bags thus far in 2017. Our hats off to them!
Remember, too, the recycle center does not take plastic grocery bags. Those can easily be recycled at Walmart, Meijer and Kroger. They all take them at their entrances.
We also do not take Styrofoam of any kind. Please do not leave it in our front parking lot bins or in the boxes you recycle.
Also, please do not leave any non-recyclable garbage or electronics in our bins. In 2015, we took in 7 tons of garbage in those bins and 5 tons in 2016. This is a massive effort on our people to sort trash out from the recycle material. No diapers either! Yes, we get dirty baby diapers which, incidentally, are not recyclable.
Lastly, I want to say thank you again to the many local businesses that do their recycling with us. Business and commercial recycling have been our biggest growth areas for the past three years.
Phil Stephens is director of the Brown County Recycle Center. He can be reached at 812-988-0140 or [email protected].
