Monday, March 16, 2009

Another Award Winner!


While doing research for the last post on CFL bulbs, I stumbled across the today's winner. When planning these awards, I've focused on individuals, businesses, internet sites and groups. It never occurred to me to include government bodies. Today that changes.

Today's award winner is:
Greenville County Solid Waste Division

Our county has a great recycling program. It's highly accessible and has a wide range of items that can be recycled.

The Solid Waste Division is responsible for the landfills and the recycling efforts for Greenville County. GCSW provides 7 manned Residential Waste and Recycling Centers and 16 unmanned drop-off sites. With a population hovering around 400,000, Greenville County's efforts result in a recycling center for every 17,000 residents. Access to governmental sponsored recycling clearly is great.

The feature that excites me the most is the fantastic range of items that can be recycled. We can recycle appliances to auto tires, eye glasses to CFL bulbs, antifreeze to vegtable oil and the list goes on. Greenville County Solid Waste Division is constantly looking for ways they can recycle more items.

This is not a profit-making effort for the County. GCSW pays recycling venders to take the items they collect. They also have found creative ways to use items for which there are not any local vending options. Let me give you an example. All colors of glass bottles are collected, even though there are not any local companies in that market. Greenville County crushes the bottles into "cullet" small stone size pieces and mixes it with sand, gravel and other aggragates which then they use to make the roads throughout the landfill. In this way, they reuse a product that might otherwise end up filling the landfill and they save the taxpayers money by reducing the amount of aggragate needed.

Greenville County Solid Waste has special events, like "The Grinding of the Green" where they collect Christmas trees after the holidays and turn them into mulch available for municiple applications as well as being available for private citizens for free.

Greenville County residents are fortunate to live in a county that not only has many private recycling efforts, but also has a pro-active county government that encourages it's citizens to live responsibly. Take a minute to say thanks and then drop off those empty bottles, worn tires and old cell phones!

For more information on Greenville County Solid Waste or for information as to location of the recycling centers, visit: http://www.greenvillecounty.org/solid_waste/

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