The Pickens County Commission was urged last Tuesday to start a countywide recycling program, starting first with the county schools and local businesses.
Polly Goodwin of Aliceville first addressed the Commission about the need to clean up the debris and trash along the area of the intersection of Alabama Highway 14 and County Road 2 (the southern part of the Benevola Road) near Aliceville.
Then she asked the Commission to consider implementing a recycling program and outlined the benefits of such a program. Mrs. Goodwin said she worked for a major company that learned to turn its garbage into recyclable material. Recycling would save the county money by reducing the amount of tonnage of garbage they collect and ship to Mississippi for disposal, and would also reduce transportation and labor costs.
Commission Chairman Ted Ezelle said the county would be interested in starting such a program and asked for Mrs. Goodwin’s expertise in this matter, and she said she would be glad to help. Ezelle said he has seen in other cities how citizens have learned to separate recyclable material from their household garbage, and he wondered if it was best to have residents put it out on the curb beside their regular garbage or to have bins around the county.
Mrs. Goodwin said the best place to start would be with the schools and businesses. If bins were to be set up, she said they would have to be in a place where they could be monitored so people wouldn’t abuse it and put their household garbage in them. Once garbage is tossed into recycled material, it spoils the material and is not worth separating, she noted.
Mrs. Goodwin said the county would also have to find a facility that would collect the recycled material. She said she knows of such a facility in Tupelo. She also said the county might consider a way to compact the recyclable material, such as plastic, which takes up so much space in the hauling of garbage; compacting it would save a great deal of space in a garbage truck.