Hagerstown to promote recycling program

November 30, 1999|By DAN DEARTH

HAGERSTOWN

The City of Hagerstown will start an advertising campaign next month intended to spark interest in a weekly recycling program that city officials initiated last year.

City Engineer Rodney Tissue said the city plans to hang billboards and send literature with electric bills that will promote the Choose 2 Reuse program, which costs participating residents $150 a year and is available only to city residents.

"We're in a never-ending endeavor to get people to do it," he said.

The city started the voluntary program in April 2006 to curb the amount of recyclable waste that was being dumped at landfills, Tissue said.

"We're trying to promote the city as green," he said.

The program includes the recycling of co-mingled aluminum, glass and plastic; mixed paper; and yard waste, Tissue said.

Residents can get their first two recycling bins ? one for mixed paper and one for co-mingled items ? free of charge by contacting the city, he said. Additional bins cost $7 each.

Participants need to put their recyclable material in the bins and place them on the curb the night before the city's recycling contractor, Allied Waste, comes the next morning, Tissue said. The pick-up days vary depending on the participant's address.

He said about 19 percent of the city's total waste stream is being recycled.

"For a voluntary program, it's been very successful," Tissue said.

The city has about $4,000 budgeted to advertise the recycling program and should begin putting up the billboards in about two weeks, he said.

The recycling program does not include:

? Window or tempered glass

? Styrofoam

? Pesticide or harmful chemical containers

? Oil cans and nonaluminum metals

? Medical waste containers (bags, syringes, containers)

? Aluminum furniture or siding

? Plastic bags

? Light bulbs