Orange County Solid Waste Management
This is a great time of year to work in the yard and take care of cleanup projects we have been neglecting all winter.
The Solid Waste Department offers this friendly reminder that open burning of refuse is not permitted in North Carolina with one exception. Home-owners may burn vegetative waste that originated on their property if public collection is not available, it is not prohibited by local ordinance and burning does not create a nuisance.
This generally means residents outside the incorporated city/town limits may burn yard trimmings and other vegetative debris. Please note that even this permissible burning is prohibited when the North Carolina Department of Air Quality issues a Code Orange, Red or Purple air quality forecast for the area (www.ncair.org). Of additional concern, North Carolina appears to be headed into another dry spell. Outdoor burning is extremely dangerous during dry weather. The risk of fires spreading due to gusty winds is great. According to the North Carolina Division of Forestry, the number one cause of wildfires in our state is careless open burning of debris. For information regarding open burning, recycling or waste disposal, contact our office at 968-2788 or recycling@co.orange.nc.us.
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On April 22 and May 1, Orange County Solid Waste and the Chapel Hill Police Department with help from the Orange County Sheriff's Department and the State Attorney General's office, hosted two Shred-A-thons for Orange County residents and employees to safely dispose of confidential paper. The two events attracted a total of well over 600 people and more than 34,800 pounds of paper were recycled by local contractor A Shred Ahead.
The next confidential paper shredding event is Oct. 6 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at University Mall. The event is free to Orange County residents and businesses.
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Hillsborough Hog Day is June 19 in downtown Hillsborough, and this event usually attracts up to 30,000 thirsty and hungry visitors who down thousands of bottled or canned drinks. Orange County's Recycling Program provides recycling services for that event and we try to staff each of the many trash stations to encourage proper recycling of cans and bottles as well as the special lemonade cups and other items, so sorting is important. We also separate food and paper for composting at several stations. Quality matters when we sell the stuff.
A volunteer earns a Hog Day shirt, a barbecue sandwich and most importantly recycling points -- 49 points are available for taking a three-hour recycling shift. Call Muriel at 968-2788 or email: recycling@co.orange.nc.us to take a shift.
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The drop off program for rigid No. 2 and No. 5 plastics, nonbottle recycling program is now a little over 3 months old and is slowly getting better, but unstaffed sites still get 40 percent contaminants dropped off in the purple Dumpsters so that has to improve to keep the program!
As of the first of May we have recovered 40 tons of No. 2 and No. 5 plastics (along with way too much junk!). Our recycling market has told us they have zero tolerance for any type of metal so please remove handles from buckets and metal axles as well as batteries from mechanical toys.
The markets are strengthening but only for quality materials. We will never make enough revenue to cover collection costs, but the cleaner the material, the larger fraction we do recover in revenue and that helps reduce the costs and increase sustainability of your recycling programs.
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Orange County Recycling offers our special thanks to some of those who helped us recover thousands of cans and bottles over the past month: At the Orange County Speedway in Rougemont, Kim Foushee and her hard working staff have collected an estimated 40,000 cans and bottles already this year.
While not all the race patrons pay attention to recycling, Kim and staff actually pluck recyclables out of the trash! Going way beyond the call of duty they are meeting the state statute that prohibits plastic bottles and aluminum cans in the trash.
Jacquie Barry, loading dock manager at Dillards Department Store at University Mall, has taken the lead in establishing an employee recycling program and called us to get bins to make recycling more obvious for her staff!
For the third year in a row Mike Drowns summoned up the recycling effort for the Ruritan Club's Car Show at their place in Efland. We collected more than 1,500 cans and bottles at the Car Show thanks largely to the efforts of Recycling Assistant Deb Wesley and Lee Barnett, leader of the area's Cub Scout Pack.
These efforts in addition to the thousands of you who set you bin at the curb or take materials to a dropoff site make our programs the success they are. As two new large plastic bottle recycling plants get ready to open later this year in the Carolinas, each will need over 2 billion bottles of feedstock, so keep recycling; it's not just good for the earth, it's creating needed jobs here at home.
One last thing: We STILL have compost bins for sale $50 cash or check at 1207 Eubanks Road, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Divert more than 200 pounds of methane-producing food and wet paper waste a year from the landfill and make good new dirt for your garden. Speaking of the landfill, our projected closure date is now Dec. 31, 2012.
