Green Team plans to expand curbside recycling

The program is expected to start in Poland in fall 2008 and expand to the rest of the county by 2011.

By DENISE DICK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

POLAND — The village and township are the pilot communities for a Mahoning County program aimed at expanding curbside recycling.

Jim Petuch, director of the Mahoning County’s Recycling Division, or Green Team, credited Allied Waste, which operates the county’s curbside program, for its participation in the program.

“I’m a big proponent of public-private partnerships,” he said.

The Green Team wants to buy 65-gallon totters, or containers on a wheeled cart, that residents can fill with recyclable materials and place at their curbside to be picked up free of charge.

The Green Team is applying for a $100,000 grant from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and putting up another $100,000 from its own coffers for the program. Allied Waste, which operates the carbon limestone landfill in the township, has bought an automated truck it will use to hoist and empty the containers.

While other aspects of Green Team recycling have grown in weight and participation, curbside recycling has remained stagnant, Petuch said.

“It’s no one’s fault,” he said. “It’s just an old program.”

He predicts the expansion will triple the weight of what’s recycled curbside.

The plan is to have the program up and running in Poland in the fall of 2008. Even if the district doesn’t get the grant, it will expand the program to some areas of the township. Last year, about 1.7 million pounds of materials were recycled through the curbside program.

Poland was picked as the pilot community partly because Allied Waste’s landfill operates in that community.

The new containers will be larger than the 18-gallon plastic recycle bins residents now fill with recyclable materials. Residents will be able to place additional materials in them.

With the current program, numbers 1 and 2 plastic, metal food and beverage cans, glass bottles, magazines and newspapers can be recycled.

The larger containers and expanded program will allow cardboard, numbers 1 through 5 plastics, office paper, phone books and paper publications except hardcover books to be recycled. With the current program, those items must be taken to a recycling drop-off site.

Mark Naples, township trustee, said he thinks people will appreciate the ease of the expanded program.

“Everyone will be able to put everything in one container now instead of having to take some things to a recycling center,” Naples said.

Petuch hopes to have the program up and running for all county residents who use curbside by 2010 or 2011.

A private company, Recycling Management of Pittsburgh, where the materials are taken after the waste hauler picks them up, also plans to build a materials recovery facility in Lowellville, near the carbon limestone landfill, as part of the program.