Recycling in Walton County

Thanks for the idea. How would one get a hold of this information to begin with?

I'm a little out of my element with this, but willing to learn.
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Trailers are good, but tourists in rental units are not going to use them. Curbside is needed.

Residents who want to recycle, already do. Additional trailers would just make it more convenient for some.

If rentals are the problem, that is what we should address. Since the units have to be cleaned between renters anyway, it doesn?t seem like it would be a burden. Give the renters blue bags and instructions. Collect the recyclables (and drop them at the bins) when the unit is cleaned. If we are talking about mandatory recycling however, that?s another matter.

Recycling is so feel good but economically such a looser that many places that were doing it, N.Y.C. for example, have stopped. It just cost more than the pay back. Do you really think your trash is worth $ 85 a year per house that it will cost to pick up. The county could spend that money better on something else IMO.

People complain about $85 a year for curbside recycling? Wow. :shock: Sounds like a bargain to me.

I think it is hard to assign a dollar amount to reducing the amount of garbage going into landfills.

How would they collect this? The reason we have the 1% sales tax in Walton County for landfill operations is more of a collection issue than anything else. When the thing went to a referendum it was defeated. The then sitting BCC did it anyway with a supermajority vote because something had to be done. Before we had this the county was serviced with dumpsters all over the place that the county picked up. And they were like many landfills, totally nasty. And many who did not want to drive just dumped it in the yard or around the corner.

I would think that there is still enough of a surplus in that fund to take care of this. Seems like every few months they are transferring out a few hundred thousand to do something else with.

[/b]OK then! Let's find this surplus. We live in one of the most beautiful places anywhere, so it seems downright ignorant that we aren't a recycling community as a whole.

My original response to the $85/year recycling fee was based on shock- that a program was in place, and it only cost$85/year, and people complained.

Recycling is so feel good but economically such a looser that many places that were doing it, N.Y.C. for example, have stopped. It just cost more than the pay back. Do you really think your trash is worth $ 85 a year per house that it will cost to pick up. The county could spend that money better on something else IMO.

Spending $85 x 10.000 households to recover maybe a hundred thousand in recyclables just doesn't compute for me.
Especially in a county that has just cut back it's Meals on Wheels for lack of funds.
We don't even have a community center here in So Wal , or lots of other things.
If you want to do something to help the environment pave the roads. All of that erosion is killing the bay.
Keep the recycling effort voluntary. It is working fine thanks to all of the good people who support it.
We have much more pressing needs and precious little money to do it with.

This post completely misses the point. Recycling is intended to reduce consumption of finite resources, like the oil that goes into plastics manufacturing.
It would not cost more if the true costs of producing goods were included in the final price of those goods. That is the flaw in using a market based analysis to decide whether something is really an economic looser. Your basic Chinese toaster includes nothing whatsoever for the very expensive cleanup that China is going to have to undertake one of these days, maybe when its rivers catch on fire. And that is just one little example. :angry:

If you want to do something to help the environment pave the roads. All of that erosion is killing the bay.

The Jan 2008 Nat'l Geographic has several good articles on what happens to old electronics and recycling basics.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/archives.html

My toaster is clean up free, and still going strong since new in 1988, twenty years.

Especially in a county that has just cut back it's Meals on Wheels for lack of funds.
We don't even have a community center here in So Wal , or lots of other things.

Hi -

I am a member of Sowal.com/bb, a local message board. There is a group of us that are wanting to look into realistic options for recycling in this area.

Several have suggested that a good starting place would be seeing what (if any) available surplus funds exist from out current garbage program. Are you able to share this information with us?
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Thought everyone would be interested in this email.

I do think there are lots of programs that deserve better funding in this county.

I would love to try to think about a way to approach this problem from a different angle. What about a private company that would be willing to haul recycling for a monthly fee? What about the idea of some sort of corporate sponsorship? I'm a little unsure whether it is better to start by focusing on individual private communities or on the county as a whole.

Looking forward to seeing everyone's take on this!


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I bet there is some sort of gov't grant/start up $ we can take advantage of to offset the $2 million.

How many times a week/month does that $2 million cover? Using WAY overly simplified math, if that estimate was to have recycling picked up as frequently as trash, we could save some $$$ by only having a weekly or bimonthly recycling route.

Currently, any surplus from the one cent sales tax (which is what funds garbage collection) is used to fund the principal and interest repayments on the $30 million bank credit line for capital projects and for road and bridge projects. During the past eighteen months, we have fallen short on sales tax revenues from what Tallahassee has told us to budget. Therefore any "surplus" has been meager or non-existent.