Going green much harder for businesses
By Diane Knich
A bartender at Moe's Crosstown Tavern loads 11 bins filled with bottles and cans into his truck every other day and takes them to the county's recycling center.
Pat McGuigan, who fuels the truck with discarded cooking oil from the tavern's fryer, and his fellow bartender Greer Farrell were alarmed by the huge number of bottles and cans that Moe's, like many other businesses, threw into the trash bin each night.
The Post and Courier
Pat McGuigan, a bartender at Moe's Crosstown Tavern, loads empty bottles and cans from the bar into his truck to recycle.
So about a year ago, they made a pitch to the owner: McGuigan would regularly take the stuff to the recycling center if the owner would pay him with some of the money he saved by reducing the amount of garbage he had to pay a private company to haul away.
Most local businesses pay private companies for trash collection. If they chose to recycle, they must pay for those services as well. That's different than most homeowners who pay taxes, but not additional fees, for such services.
"The most frustrating part of a business taking on recycling is that it really takes a lot of work," Farrell said. "It's a shame it's so difficult."
But business recycling must increase if the county is to reach the goal County Council approved in March to boost recycling from 10 percent to 40 percent of the stream of municipal solid waste. A solid waste consultant hired by the county recommended that businesses make up about 10 percent of the increase. But businesses face a lot of obstacles to "going green" even if they want to recycle more.
Theresa Martin, a marketing specialist for Charleston County's Environmental Management Department, said the county's plan to increase recycling will take some time to complete because it's a huge undertaking. "But we're working on it," she said.
The county now doesn't have the resources to pick up recyclables from businesses, she said. "Some businesses would require a pick-up everyday," she said, unlike the every-other-week schedule for households. "It's a manpower issue," she said. "We would need more drivers and more trucks. Right now, we're just trying to get all the neighborhoods in every other week." Businesses can pay a private service to pick up their materials, she said. They can also bring them to the recycling center on Romney Street, or to one of the county's 50 small drop sites. When companies recycle, she said, they reduce the amount of trash they produce. Private trash companies usually charge by the volume of waste they pick up, so pulling out recyclable materials saves some money on trash pick-up costs.
But that doesn't apply to downtown Charleston businesses.
The city of Charleston picks up downtown garbage six days a week, said Mike Metzler, deputy director of operations. The area is dense with restaurants, bars and hotels, he said. And most businesses don't have the space on their property for a dumpster. They also don't have space inside to store recyclables, he said.
So, most businesses throw almost everything away. The city takes 80 percent of what it picks up downtown — including cans, bottles and cardboard — to the incinerator in North Charleston, which County Council recently voted to close at the end of the year. The rest goes to the Bees Ferry Landfill.
Susie Ridder, general manager at the downtown Vendue Inn, called the county recently looking for help to start recycling materials from the restaurant and rooftop bar. "If we could recycle beer bottles," she said, "it would be huge."
Ridder said the inn is a small business and simply doesn't have the resources to hire a company to pick up recyclables every day. It also doesn't have the space to store the materials or enough staff members to transport them to a recycling center. "We're very interested," she said, "but we need somebody to work with us."
Chris Fisher, owner of Fisher Recycling, said many businesses really want to recycle, and the number of them that do is growing.
He said maybe a "pay-as-you-throw" system would help. By that, he said, means that recycling should be picked up free, but both homes and businesses would be charged for the amount of garbage they throw away.
Christine Cooley, a member of the city's Green Committee and chairwoman of its Sub-Committee on Recycling and Solid Waste, said her group is recommending the city make commercial recycling universal and mandatory.
The group's recommendation will be included among many the Green Committee submits to City Council in the fall. The group isn't going to recommend specifically how it's done, she said. But the downtown area is crucial, she said. It would make a good place to pilot a program, she said.
"There's a huge amount of recycling there," she said. "And it's done successfully in other congested downtowns."
Reach Diane Knich at 937-5491 or dknich@postandcourier.com.
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GermanyXO (anonymous) says...
Clearly it's possible for Charleston to fund a larger-scaled recycling program if it simply cut funding directed to social/welfare programs, which received more than enough funding as part of the federal government's stimulus windfall for this year alone. Instead of simply handing out free food and unemployment checks every week, why doesn't the city use existing manpower to launch an organized effort utilizing our city's idle manpower?
What's stopping our city from placing color-coded containers to encourage recycling throughout the peninsula? How much would it cost to have somebody monitor these containers to ensure citizens/tourists are complying?
June 29, 2009 at 12:44 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ltgrunt (anonymous) says...
Taking employees from social welfare programs and applying them to recycling/waste reduction programs likely wouldn't work in most cases, GXO. I doubt that many of the city, county or state employees with human services and other related or similar degrees and career specialties could be magically turned into environmental experts, waste disposal technicians and route planning specialists. What you suggest would require cutting a large number of jobs - and therefore cutting a large number of taxpayers - and creating a handful of jobs to replace them.
So, essentially, your plan is to make unemployment rates, welfare costs and city budgeting much worse for some vague, undefined "larger-scaled recycling program."
Exactly what city manpower is idle that you think could be made to do this work adequately and competently?
Your bin idea works, but only for individuals and not for businesses, unless you are also proposing some Byzantine and highly inefficient methods.
June 29, 2009 at 1:40 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Deborrah (anonymous) says...
I believe the Hampton - Newport News area of Virginia have a good recycling program.- www.gogreenhamptonroads.com
June 29, 2009 at 5:20 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
pirate42 (anonymous) says...
Take the shootem up, drug dealers that we are housing and put there butts to work on the chain gang again instead of leaving there lazie butts sitting in the cells eating and living off my dime... FED UP
June 29, 2009 at 6:28 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
GermanyXO (anonymous) says...
Itgrunt wrote,
"So, essentially, your plan is to make unemployment rates, welfare costs and city budgeting much worse for some vague, undefined "larger-scaled recycling program." Exactly what city manpower is idle that you think could be made to do this work adequately and competently? Your bin idea works, but only for individuals and not for businesses, unless you are also proposing some Byzantine and highly inefficient methods."
Thanks, Itgrunt. I figured our city could spare existing employees for a few hours out of every department to monitor how our citizens respond to the idea of bins placed throughout town.
Why must you always take an absolute (and extreme) perspective on other's suggestions? I believe other posters on here would agree with me in saying that you lack an open mind. Perhaps it's true someone such as you perceives everything in this world, like computers, as nothing more than ONES AND ZEROS--pull your head out of your desktop/laptop and instead of applying your blatant lack of grammatical eloquence on attempts to be a socio-economic solutions expert, indicated by your extreme, over-simplified belief "that many of the city, county or state employees with human services and other related or similar degrees and career specialties could be magically turned into environmental experts, waste disposal technicians and route planning specialists.", and simply take the high road by asking your city government to do more with what you pay them in taxes to make our city be a leader when it comes to everything we pay its leadership.
June 29, 2009 at 7:03 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
heather107 (anonymous) says...
When you're being ingnorant, you should use the right words!
there should be "their"
lazie should be "lazy"
June 29, 2009 at 7:59 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
MyMcClellanville (anonymous) says...
I'm afraid this may just have to be one of those things that you do for the intrinsic value not the financial payoff or easiness of it all.
I've been trying to get residential recycling pickup in McClellanville for a couple years now. as it is I have to take it to the recycling center myself every couple of weeks (not nearly the hassle of every other day). The thing that makes me sick is that I'm lessening the load on the trash pickup because about half of our waste is recyclable, so if everyone did it, you could pay them less and use the savings to pickup recycling..Win-Win-Win
One day the rest of the world will wake up and realize how much can be saved.
June 29, 2009 at 8:04 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
BlackReign (anonymous) says...
GermanyXO."Why must you always take an absolute (and extreme) perspective on other's suggestions? I believe other posters on here would agree with me in saying that you lack an open mind."
grunt has an open mind, but only to his way of thinking. LOL, professor grunt.
Just click on his name, and read his posts, he is a genius in his own mind!
As for going 'green', if cap and trade gets passed by the senate, it wont matter, we wont be producing anything but poverty in this country.
June 29, 2009 at 8:10 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ltgrunt (anonymous) says...
GXO, you opened your argument by whining about social welfare programs and suggesting - as if it were a magic "fix everything" button - that taking money away from that could fix our recycling problems. Complaining about someone questioning the obvious gaps in your suggestion and calling me extreme and closed-minded shows that behavior more on your end than on mine.
Disagreeing with you and offering constructive criticisms of your poorly thought out ideas doesn't mean that I don't have an open mind. On the other hand, rushing off into a tirade on how I'm such an awful person because I don't fall in line with your ideology is rather suggestive of your tendency (or lack thereof) to consider alternatives.
BR, it's no surprise that you would join in on the fun of insulting me; you've already demonstrated many times that you're happy to demean me regardless of silly little things like facts, logic or civil discourse. But by all means, continue to belittle me and offhandedly dismiss the topic at hand without offering meaningful contribution or cogent arguments.
June 29, 2009 at 8:43 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
theronce (anonymous) says...
Recycling is nothing new. Look at the Greatest Generation duing the WWII. Those folks recycled virtually everything. My mother even saved the wrinkled-up tinsel off the Christmas tree from year to year as long as she lived. Many in that generation threw away little, used virtually everything, repurposed trash and junk, and had plenty. I can walk out of the grocery store and have $100 worth of stuff in about 3, maybe 4, plastic bags. Once I do away with the wrappings and containers, I bet I could put it all in 1 bag most of the time. We truly are wasteful and know that we can do better. The devil is in the details.
June 29, 2009 at 8:47 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
nopartisan_noproblem (anonymous) says...
As far as the manpower thing goes, no we can't take away the actual workers in the social/welfare programs, but how about people receiving unemployment checks or other taxpayer assistance, but do not put into the system. I don't see why there is any reason that someone receiving unemployment should have a problem with assisting the same city and taxpayers that are helping keep them afloat. I'm not saying a full 5/40 schedule but at least 4-6 hours three days a week. We could also apply that to other areas throughout the city that we lack manpower due to lack of funds.
I can speak up for ITgrunt. We never disagree, but he does provide intelligent opposition of ideas, which is the whole idea of debate. You learn no new views or opinions if we're all agreeing.
And Heather, don't do the grammar police thing. That's more annoying than the mistakes themselves.
June 29, 2009 at 9:12 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
nopartisan_noproblem (anonymous) says...
"We never disagree, but he does provide intelligent opposition of ideas, which is the whole idea of debate"
I meant we never agree, definitely.
June 29, 2009 at 9:14 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
wjhamilton3 (anonymous) says...
We take our bottles and drink containers home when we eat out and put them in our home recycling bin. We use one of the reusable fabric grocery bags we carry around in our vehicle and golf car for that purpose. We send our empty egg cartons back to the lady who sells us the local, free range eggs. What disposable grocery bags we end up with are dropped off at O'Brion's pub for them to use at "Go bags."
We put out two small bags of trash this morning, just filling the bottom of the big municipal trash container.
June 29, 2009 at 9:16 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ltgrunt (anonymous) says...
I think we've agreed once or twice, Nopartisan - maybe just about the weather or something, but still, it's a start.
And actually, I do agree with your idea of using underemployed and unemployed people who would simply be drawing unemployment money anyway as labor for recycling efforts. I've always been a fan of workfare over welfare, using money to encourage people to work rather than only covering (sometimes extended) periods of no work.
If we take some folks who are in a lurch and have just been laid off of industrial, retail and whatever other jobs and give them a paycheck for doing something productive for the city *and* beneficial for the environment, odds are it will create better morale than simply giving them a check to make ends meet while they get mired in the depressing act of job hunting during a recession.
Wjh3, I'm also a fan of the reusable shopping bags. They're also handy as a last-resort for packing things for a move when you run out of boxes.
June 29, 2009 at 9:31 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
nopartisan_noproblem (anonymous) says...
Thank you for acknowledging that Itgrunt. It is just ideas such as these that make you look at the system and say "why don't you do this, it makes so much sense?" I don't understand why these things aren't even taken into consideration.
June 29, 2009 at 10:25 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ltgrunt (anonymous) says...
Common sense seems to come a lot slower to politicians and bureaucrats than it does to everyday people, Nopartisan.
Then again, without having been privy to every single discussion, I can't say with absolute certainty that alternatives like that haven't at least been brought up. It might be that such an idea was discussed and someone presented a halfway reasonable argument against it, or no one presented a complete argument for it. It's hard to say, really, but when a good idea makes a lot of sense to a lot of people, it's worth pushing for. Might be something worth writing letters or putting together a petition for, at any rate.
June 29, 2009 at 11:21 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
GermanyXO (anonymous) says...
Itgrunt--you must have failed elementary reading because my first post was nowhere near suggesting a convenient "fix everything button". If you tune in properly, then you would've captured the key word "possible". Also, I suggested the city only cut funding, not eliminate it--that was something you introduced into this discussion. Instead, you were the one who dove off a cliff into a take-no-prisoners rampage and made yourself sound like a crazed lunatic.
If I were a betting man, I'd guess that you enjoy talking over people when it's not your turn to speak. Grow up.
June 29, 2009 at 12:25 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ltgrunt (anonymous) says...
Ah, the old "grow up" line, calling card of the Internet message board elite, who want to prove just how mature they are at every available opportunity. Bravo, GermanyXO, you're such a wise, responsible adult. Good for you.
What exactly do you think happens when funding is cut for programs and government services? Do you think that people don't lose jobs? Do you believe that they just stop ordering so many staples and coffee filters and everything balances out? Cuts mean job losses. Job losses means less income from taxes and more output in unemployment. Your panacea of cutting social welfare causes more damage than it cures. It's "possible" to do a lot of things, but they're not all good ideas.
You may also want to take your own snide, insolent comment about elementary reading into consideration, as I never said anything about eliminating funding either. I simply realistically considered the consequences for your fiscal hack-and-slash job, which you failed to do.
If you can't take criticism I would suggest keeping your ideas to yourself, not getting overly defensive and haughtily insulting people who disagree with your ideas.
June 29, 2009 at 2:04 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Larz13 (anonymous) says...
GermanyXO,
Don't waste your time. It's hopeless for some ignorant people.
June 29, 2009 at 2:20 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
theronce (anonymous) says...
One thing that may help is to put a deposit on glass and plastic containers. Would that be a nightmare?...just tossing it out for discussion.
June 29, 2009 at 3:34 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
theronce (anonymous) says...
How about a home plastic shredder and/or glass breaker, then sell the stuff by the pound?
June 29, 2009 at 3:37 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
nopartisan_noproblem (anonymous) says...
We shouldn't have to pay people to be environmentally responsible.
June 29, 2009 at 3:55 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Jeff9 (anonymous) says...
Even better than recycling; Save money and the Earth and be clean at the same time. All businesses can do this. Get serious and add Bathroom Bidet Sprayers to all your bathrooms. Available at www.bathroomsprayers.com with these you won't even need toilet paper any more, just a towel to dry off! Don't worry, you can still have toilet paper, you can even make it the soft stuff and not feel guilty since you're using so little. It's cheap and can be installed without a plumber; and runs off the same water line to your toilet. You'll probably pay for it in a few months of toilet paper savings. Now we're talking green and helping the environment without any pain. As for water use a drought is always a concern and must be dealt with prudently but please remember that in the big picture the industrial water users always far exceed the water use of household users and in the case of toilet paper manufacture it is huge. The pollution and significant power use from that manufacturing process also contributes to global warming so switching to a hand bidet sprayer and lowering your toilet paper use is very green in multiple ways.
July 3, 2009 at 10:52 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
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