These trucks will be used to move the recyclables from 8th Ave. and Perkins, where the new spot for recycling. is located. The City of Stillwater’s Convenience Collection Center opened Tuesday.
The City of Stillwater’s Convenience Collection Center, a new recycling and waste drop-off site at 8th Ave. and Perkins, opened to a gray Tuesday morning and its first day of operations. The grand opening, scheduled to coincide with Earth Day, included a tour, ribbon cutting and brief speeches from city leaders and a representative from Oklahoma’s Department of Environmental Quality.
“I think this is going to be a wonderful asset for our community to help us all be a little more green,” city manager Dan Galloway said to a gathering of about 48 Stillwater residents, OSU students and city staff.
Mayor Roger McMillian said the center is the beginning of being realistic about recycling in Stillwater.
“We all know that on two or three occasions over the past 15 or 20 years, I think we’ve given lip service to it,” McMillian said. “I think today is tangible evidence, I think today is illustration that we’re going to do more than give lip service to it over the coming months and coming years.”
McMillian said the center is necessary for several reasons. He said the old site was inadequate because it was too small, unmanned and prone to decrepitness.
Furthermore, there were issues of contamination of loads of recycled materials because the site was unmanned.
The center is also intended to make the process more convenient, which will increase recycling program participation. City leaders hope reducing the amount of material entering the landfill that could otherwise be recycled will help save on landfill fees. Fenton Rood, director of waste systems planning for the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality said ”It’s cheaper to recycle than it is to pay to throw it away. So I think long-term, we’re going to have economic incentives to use facilities like this.”
OSU student Leandra Dilorenzo said, “I think it’s great. I think Stillwater needs something like this because if you don’t take care of the environment, it’s not going to last very long.”
The center is on the footprint of an old recycling collection site. The old collection site resembled the sites at Airport Road near Boomer Lake and 19th and Western, which both remain open. The center is expanded to allow cars to drive through and exit onto a side street and has an array of improvements to make dropping off recycling and household waste much easier. The improvements will also prevent overflowing and messiness that occurred before. The center is gated and monitored with surveillance cameras and city employees staff the center during the day to ensure recyclables end up in the proper containers. The city waste management offices will move into a small building on the property, ensuring there will almost always be someone on hand to staff the site. Instead of weed patches and gravel, landscaping lines the interior and the driveway is paved with concrete. McMillian said the center cost the city $69,000, but would have been more expensive to build in a different place because they would have had to buy the land.
The center accepts a wider range of recyclable material than the previous site and in effect functions as an outpost for the city dump, which Allied Waste runs. Along with accepting recyclables, bins are available for people who lack trash service. “Illegal dumping is still a big issue all over Oklahoma. And even though we think of it as a rural phenomenon, a lot of that waste is originating in communities like this, so we need to have alternatives available,” Rood said.
Rood said Stillwater is unique because it has alternatives for disposing of electronics and yard waste.
“Stillwater is incredibly progressive by accepting landscaping waste here. About 20 percent of what we throw away in Oklahoma is yard waste and we all know, those of us who are gardeners, there are far more productive things to do with it than to put it in a landfill,” Rood said.
Rodney Hickmon, a waste management supervisor for the city, said the green waste and mulch collected on site is available to pick up for free to gardeners and landscapers.
In addition to green waste and electronics, the center will accept the usual fare of paper, plastic, glass and aluminum. For now, the site only accepts No. 1 and No. 2 plastics for recycling. Other plastics are discarded in a mixed waste bin which goes to the landfill. However, Hickmon said in the future they will probably accept other types of plastic. The city is in contract with Allied Waste to dump waste and to take care of recyclable material until 2012. He said the city will then find another contractor or take care of the material itself. The center is open weekdays from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon. In addition, recyclers have another option for electronic waste once a year, at Stillwater’s E-Waste Recycle event, which is Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 9th Street and Lowry, next to the post office.
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