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Officials Set to Work
on Bars’ Recycling
Athens-Clarke County officials worry about
your downtown drinking habits. Not how
drunk you got (unless you drove), or whom
you went home with, but the sloppy state
that bags of empty PBRs are in when they're
hauled out of downtown. Contaminants such .
as food waste and un-recyclable plastics find
their way into recycling bins when they should
be headed for the landfill. The commingling
causes efficiency problems at the county
sorting facility and budget problems at the
recycling office. So, in an effort to help drink
ers differentiate between trash and recycling, •
and to create a unified recycling look, the ACC
Recycling Division rolled out 50 new recycling
bins in 15 bars over the summer, with plans to
reach 35 more bars and restaurants by the end
of the year.
"Wherever you go, if you're downtown,
you look for this green-domed bin, and that's
where you put your can or bottle," says
Kristine Kobylus, program education specialist
for ACC Recycling.
"We just want to collect those recyclables,"
says Suki Janssen, ACC waste reduction admin
istrator. "If all the bars are more proactive and
have the bins visible, right there, it's going
to be a no-brainer even for a person who may
have had a little too much to drink."
The bins are a donation from Leon Farmer
and Co., and ACC Recycling has te:med up
with the local beer distributor as well as UGA
green groups to organize a pub crawl on Oct.
15 to promote the bins and raise awareness of
proper recycling etiquette. Participants in the
event, called "Bin There, Done That," will be
able to purchase T-shirts to get drink deals at
participating bars. Proceeds will go towards
buying more recycling bins and other recycling
education programs.
The issue isn't just the availability of recy
cling bins—most bars already have self-service
bins for their customers—it's whether bars
and their patrons correctly dispose of their
drinks and waste, and whether the patrons
know if their plastic cups are recyclable or
not. These late-night decisions have large fis
cal repercussions.
When a bag of recyclables drops onto the
conveyor belt at the ACC.Materials Recycling
Facility, a sorter quickly eyes the bag for con
taminants. If trash—food waste or un-recycla-
ble plastic—is in the mix, he'll chuck the bag
into a truck headed for the landfill, and the
county loses out on the money it makes sell
ing processed recyclables. Because the sorting
facility is part of a public/private partnership,
the contracted factory pays fees at the landfill
just like everybody else. If trash is discovered
once the bag is ripped open on the line, the
entire system is shut down while the con
taminants are sorted from the recyclables by
• hand. Whether it's in the form of lost revenue
or inefficient labor, a contaminated recycling
stream costs money, Janssen says, and her
office is just a^ budget-conscious as the next.
"One way of making recycling economically
viable, other than relying on tax dollars to
fund the process, is to make sure the burden
that those recyclables are clean and in the
right state for the processor is on the person
using the recyclables," Janssen says.
Early reports on the bins' effectiveness
are mixed. Barcode managers say that the
clear instructions on the green domes make it
harder for their customers to mess up. But at
Allgood Lounge, it's a different story: they're
leaky, annoying to handle and two bins' bot
toms busted out, owner Damon Krebs says.
"I wish they'd gotten together with us and
asked us what we needed," says Krebs, who
says his bars do a good job of separating recy
clables, and only use plastics on high-volume
game days. Joey Tatum's Little Kings and
Manhattan bars aren't currently using the bins,
but he says a unified look might work okay, as
long as customers have a trash option next to
the bin. "Half the time they're drunk, so it's
not 100 percent foolproof," he says. Having
bartenders and busers clear tables is the best
way to keep recyclables sorted, Tatum says,
but he's aware that "the bigger you get, tfie
more difficult it is to get a handle on it."
Are people actually looking for the triangle
under the cup? Sure, it's plastic; but is it recy
clable? Tatum would like the city to help him
find a wholesaler that carries Number 1 and 2
plastic cups, which are the types of plastic the
county accepts for recycling at this time.
EMPTY STATISTICS
Not to state the obvious, but down
town Athens drinkers drain a lot of
glass bottles, aluminum cans and
plastic cups in a regular weekend.
Let’s get fancy with the numbers to
make it exciting: 3.5 tons of bottles
and cans are sucked down over a
typical three-day bender. That’s
14,000 Bud bottles or 462,000
Pabst cans—enough crushed emp
ties to fill an eight-yard Dumpster.
[Andre Gallant]
Numeric codes and leaky bins aside,
Janssen says the awareness campaign is
much-needed downtown. Although the yearly
recycling audit isn't yet finished, she's seeing
more contaminants in the recycling stream
from downtown and elsewhere. "We get a lot
of contamination downtown," says Janssen.
"The later it gets, the more inebriated people
get and they're not paying attention to what's
a trash can, what's a recycling bin."
Talking at a cafe table downtown, Kobylus
is reminded of how much recycling education
is still needed in Athens. A young man steps
out from behind the Barnette's railing and
stuffs three Bud Light bottles into a garbage
bin not four feet from where she's sitting.
"It's not easy," she says.
Andre Gallant
Neighbors Take On
Exotic Plants at
Memorial Park
A grassroots effort to weed out the inva
sive "bad boy" flora at Memorial Park began
on Saturday, Oct. 3, but organizers don't
for a moment believe the exotic plants such
as English ivy, Chinese privet and Nepalese
browntop grass will bite the dust anytime
soon. The park, between Milledge Avenue and
Lumpkin Street at 293 Gran Ellen Dr., includes
72 acres of land, "and my guess, excluding
the trees, is that 90 percent of the biomass is
exotic," says nearby resident Linda G. Chafin.
"It's really bad." Chafin is a botanist and
one of the people in the area who has taken
shovel, trowel, weed wrench and gloved hand
to bully the nuisance plants out of their com
fortable surroundings.
Most of the plants identified as exotics
started out as landscaping plants or by acci
dentally being introduced from their native
lands through trade or other routes. The
problem with them is they have no natural
predators, so native species are forced out,
Chafin says. The exotics get the sunshine, the
nutrients and water, and eventually insects,
birds and mammals are forced out, too. She
says insects don't feed as much on non-native
plants, so there is less food for the birds. The
birds will eat the berries, and in so doing,
carry and drop the seeds, which spread the
invasives.
Clearing is a never-ending job, accord
ing to Chafin, Dorothy O'Niell and Sue Wilde,
who claim that stalking and eradicating these
weeds can become a fixation. Wilde and her
husband Ed moved from Oconee County to
Five Points in 1999 and discovered a "mon
oculture" of English ivy in their backyard.
"That's what got me started," she says. That
interest spread to the State Botanical Garden
of Georgia and overgrowth there. "I have this
reputation," Wilde says. "I see it everywhere.
It has become an obsession."
Wilde and Chafin decided together to tackle
Memorial Park, she says. "At first, I said, 'Oh,
no, the park is huge.' We walked around and
said, 'We have to do something. There's no
way we'll get 10 percent cleared, but at least
we'll be doing something.'"
O'Niell says eradicating the invasive plants
will allow the red oaks, black cherry, beech,
tulip poplar, short-leafed pines and other
native canopy trees to thrive. She says Wilde
is an inspiration. "She's shown me what one
person has been able to do out there," O'Niell
says. "She has inspired me to take on a patch
of woods behind my house."
The women hope people will see they can
take care of their own yards, maybe a patch
of roadside, or anywhere there's ivy, privet or
other exotic takeover.
Chafin says there's also kudzu in Memorial
Park, "but it's not as much a concern. Kudzu
has to be out in the open. The other three are
happy to live in the shade on the forest floor.
Our goal is to restore the forest floor and save
the canopy."
Volunteers for future efforts at Memorial
Park are asked to wear long-sleeved shirts,
long pants, closed-toe shoe r and gloves. Some
tools will be available, but people with shov
els or clippers should bring them. Once the
plants are pulled, other native plants will be
needed to fill in the spaces left behind, Chafin
says. Nurseries or anyone who can donate
native shrubs like buckeye, azalea, trilliums
and native grasses such as river oats may
email O'Niell at doniell@bellsouth.nQt.
Clearing will continue from 9 a.m. to noon
the first and third Saturdays of eacn month,
rain or shine. Meet in the parking lot in front
of Memorial Park's administrative building. To
let organizers know how many people might
participate, contact Wilde at suewilde@hot-
mail.com if interested.
Cathy Mong
6 FLAGPOLE.COM • OCTOBER 7.2009