The county is contracting with a recycling company to collect and remove waste paper products including cardboard, newspapers, office paper, magazines, and books.
During Monday night’s monthly meeting, the county commission voted to partner with Caraustar Recycling of Nashville. The company will place collection containers at 6 convenience (trash collection) sites and at all 5 schools. The service will be provided at no cost to the county.
The action was taken upon the recommendation of the county commission’s solid waste committee. “We have talked about recycling cardboard for quite a while. We received two proposals. The solid waste committee met in June and you have a proposal they recommended from Caraustar,” said County Mayor Tim Stribling.
According to the proposal, “Caraustar will partner with DeKalb County to assist with their waste paper removal. Caraustar-Nashville will place Front End Loader (FEL) 7 yard containers in 6 of DeKalb County’s convenience centers and the 5 schools. The containers will be labeled for paper only. Acceptable contents include; cardboard, newspaper, office paper, magazines, and books. A start date will be agreed upon by both parties. Either party may cancel this agreement at any time with a 60 day notice.”
“ Caraustar will provide a pickup route to service 6 DeKalb County convenience centers and 5 schools. We (Caraustar) will place FEL 7 yard recycling containers in a total of 11 sites. All recycling sites will receive 2 containers with the exception of Midway. This lower traffic site will only receive 1 container. No fees wil be charged to DeKalb County for this service”.
“Caraustar will correspond with the attendants at the convenience centers to monitor the volumes. This will determine if we (Caraustar) need to add additional containers for overflow. Our goal is to assist DeKalb County with improving their recycling program by creating a bi-monthly pickup route,” according to the proposal.
The DeKalb County convenience centers and schools selected for this route are as follows:
Snow Hill, Allen’s Ferry, McMinnville Highway, City of Alexandria, Liberty, Midway, DeKalb Middle School, DeKalb County High School, DeKalb West School, Northside Elementary School, and Smithville Elementary School.
The county received another proposal from a local recycling company. Their offer was to pay the county one cent per pound for clean loose cardboard (not mixed with trash) but the county would have had to provide the roll off containers for collection and a truck to deliver the cardboard to the recycling center. The company also offered to pay the county $35 per ton under the market price if the county wished to bale its own cardboard”.
“The county doesn’t have a cardboard baler. Under this offer, it would require us (county) to purchase the containers and provide the truck to get them to their site,” said County Mayor Stribling.
“Under the proposal with Caraustar, they will furnish the containers and bring the truck to haul it off at no cost to the county,” added Stribling.
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