County recycling program strives to improve recycling

Carroll County Recycling Operations has received two regional honors, but county recycling manager Maria Myers says she would like to see even more improvement in the county’s 41 percent recycling rate. Carroll County Recycling Operations received the 2012 Extraordinary Achievement Award from the Maryland Recycling Network. Myers said she submitted a description of the county’s recycling efforts and recent expansions, and the county was recognized for having “contributed to recycling in Maryland through extraordinary creativity, resourcefulness, ingenuity, determination and other means.” Some of those creative promotions include a Facebook page providing recycling news and tips to its fans, representation at many events, such as the Carroll County Arts Council’s Festival of Wreaths, and making community presentations, school appearances, advertising in local papers and radio and special creative projects, Myers said.

Last year for America Recycles Day in November, the office of recycling worked with the Carroll Arts Center to attract local artists to decorate the over-sized recycling bins. Visitors to the County Office Building voted on their favorite bin, and at the end, each was given to a different school in the county in hopes of inspiring youths to recycle.

Also in 2011, the county began partnering with Goodwill and Habitat for Humanity to provide those organizations with salvageable materials brought to the landfill.

The county received an Earth Day Award from Cintas Corporation, which partners with Carroll to provide paper shredding services in conjunction with the county’s household hazardous waste collection days. Myers was recently voted to join the board of directors for the Maryland Recycling Network. While these awards are nice, Myers said she is looking ahead for new ways to increase the county’s recycling rate.

“I don’t think people realize how much we’re doing in the community,” she said.

Myers said she has tried everything she can think of to reach all county residents, including public appearances at various events, advertisements in newspapers and local radio stations, even buying space in a coupon mailer that is delivered to every household.

She is also trying to work with Carroll County Public Schools to increase their general recycling and enthusiasm over recycling. She said she is hoping more schools will sign up to be in the Recycle Bowl, a program by Keep America Beautiful that challenges schools to increase and track their recycling for four weeks and compete against other schools in their division.

Myers said another effective way to increase the county’s recycling rate could be to increase the number of homes with recycling containers that are equivalent to the size of their trash cans. The county was able to purchase more than 10,000 of these larger recycling toters in 2009 through a federal grant, and the county saw an increase in recycling between 15 and 20 percent from the trash haulers whose customers received the bins.

Myers said the cost of the recycling toters fluctuates with the plastic market, so it would be hard to predict what the containers would cost two years after the last batch was purchased, and the county wouldn’t have a grant to assist in the purchase either, unless they found one.