County Recycling Bins

We have three locations in Eastern Wahkiakum County:

  • Puget Island Fire Hall
  • Skamokawa Fire Hall
  • Wahkiakum High School

Each has the two same bins:

Click on each item type to see what is ok and not ok to recycle in these bins.

We have one location in West Wahkiakum County at the KM Mountain transfer station.  Materials there are transferred by Pacific County.  In addition to Mixed Paper, #1 and #2 Plastics, Tin and Aluminium Cans and Cardboard, Glass is also recycled there.

 

Painting the Bins at the three western county locations.

Volunteers from the Wahkiakum 4H Robotics Club and Healthy Living Collaborative did the work. Wahkiakum county paid for the paint and related materials, and paid for and mounted the new signage. Cathlamet Building Materials gave discounts on the paint and materials.

While doing the work we had many people stop by and thanked us. Nearly everyone who stopped had questions about what is OK and not OK to recycle.  Nearly everyone had something they thought was OK to recycle, but wasn’t.  A few people stopped briefly then drove off:  We noticed in the backs of some of these vehicles materials that did not look recyclable.

Our experience while painting affirmed our belief that most everyone wants to recycle correctly but most are not sure what is “correct”,  and there are a few people who “dump and run” their garbage.

The help with the first problem our intention is to run an education campaign every fall for the next three years.  The first part was to repaint the bins and improve the signage, thinking that a clean site will be treated more cleanly. This campaign will be led by 4H and the Healthy Living Collaborative, promoted publicly in the paper, promoted by the Chamber of Commerce, and promoted in the elementary school.

To help with the second problem we are looking at a variety of options:

  • monitor the bins and talk to those who attempt to dump and run
  • monitor the bins and photo those who appear to deliberately dump, and then pass the photo to the Eagle for posting in a monthly ‘shame report” –  this is the favourite of the 4H kids so far
  • monitor the bins and photo those who appear to deliberately dump, and then pass the photo to the sheriff for follow up
  • mount a motion-activated camera on the poles nearby and feed the result to the sheriff
  • modify county ordinance to increase the penalty for dumping
  • publicly point out the consequences of dumping and ask those responsible to stop (this is what we are currently doing in our education campaign, if it doesn’t work we will go to one or more of the other options)

 

We were asked several times why glass isn’t recycled in our County Bins.  The short answer is simply that it costs too much to haul glass and the probability of it ever making any money is very low.  First, glass has to separated at the bins into three types: clear, green and brown. That requires using three of the bin slots in the “TriBin”.  Adjusting the Bins to allow this might be possible once we are always recycling correctly in both the Mixed Paper and the #1 and #2 Plastics bins. We would probably take two slots from Plastics and one slot from Mixed Paper.