By: Alexander Contreras

In honor of National Recycling Week, the Athens Clarke County Solid Waste Department opened a new recycling center on November 9th. The facility is called the Center for Hard to Recycle Material, or CHaRM.

CHaRM recycles materials, such as paint and lightbulbs, that people otherwise would throw away.

The introduction of CHaRM will help both the ACC Recycling Division and the ACC Municipal Solid Waste Landfill in their efforts to keep waste minimal. Cema Wallace, Program Education Specialist for the Recycling Division, believes the ultimate goal is to prevent waste buildup in the environment.

 

“The main thing is keeping it from filling up quicker,” Wallace continues, “we want to limit the amount of landfills we have in the world, not only in ACC, so we want to keep things out the landfill if possible so that way it doesn’t fill up as quickly.”

Jon Mineemoyer, the Administrative Secretary for the ACC Landfill, believes more efforts need to be made to see a larger impact on the landfill. Statistics from Mineemoyer reveal that the landfill sees approximately 300 tons of waste a day. 50 – 70% of those tons is material that could be recycled instead, according to Suki Janssen Director of the Solid Waste and Recycling Division of ACC.

CHaRM will help increase recycling endeavors and reduce the amount of waste in the Athens Clarke County community. However, more efforts need to be made from both communities and organizations to truly see a large impact in society.