Editorial: County trashing residents’ willingness to recycle

York County Public Works officials said about a month ago that they’re planning to roll out a recycling education program to encourage participation and make the process more efficient.

It can’t come soon enough.

The county operates more than a dozen recycling facilities that are available to all residents, but are especially used by those who live outside town and city limits in neighborhoods that don’t have pickup service. Some of the most heavily used centers, including the one called Baxter because of its proximity to that community, gets more than 100 cars an hour, officials said.

But the county is still seeing too much recyclable material thrown out with trash, which ends up in landfills in York and Columbia. Besides the environmental impact of throwing away recyclables, it’s expensive, too. Taxpayers are responsible for the tipping fees York County pays when it trucks refuse to Columbia – a necessity to avoid filling our municipal landfill too quickly.

The math is simple: Reduce the volume of trash by getting more people to recycle – and do it properly – and save the cost of shipping it out. There’s also another equation to compute and that’s the hundreds of thousands of dollars York County brings in by selling recyclable material to processing plants.

There’s a problem, however. If the county is sincere about an outreach to encourage more participation, it needs to get out of its own way.

In August, Fort Mill residents who use the recycling facility on S.C. 160 East across from the Anne Springs Close Greenway Recreation Complex reported a sudden change of policy. Residents were surprised when they were told they could no longer fill the blue bag the county gives away with their plastic bottles, cans and glass and simply deposit it. Now, they were told, they have to open the bags and hand-sort the items. Further complicating things, some residents swore that the attendants at the center made them throw out recyclables.

County officials explained that the facility was being used for a pilot program, and that any hand-sorting was voluntary. But attendants at the center contradicted that, telling the Fort Mill Times not only that hand sorting will soon be mandatory, but that the county is phasing out the blue bags. The attendants at Baxter said the same thing.

Not true, public works officials said, when we asked. After several days of confusion, we were told it was all a matter of miscommunication, the blue bags are staying, hand-sorting will be encouraged but voluntary and it will all be explained as part of a grand public education program that will include the county giving away reusable bags.

While we’re still waiting for word about that education program, residents who use the S.C. 160 East facility are once again telling us the hand-sorting is mandatory and items they previously thought were recyclable are no longer accepted. We’re not sure what this means. Perhaps that center’s gone rogue. Or someone simply didn’t get the memo.

Whatever the problem is, we hope county public works gets its act together soon. Officials said they not only want to see more people recycle, but don’t want to lose the ones already on-board. At this rate, however, the county is trashing a good opportunity to capitalize on residents’ willingness to do their part for the environment by recycling as much as possible.

This story was originally published September 21, 2015 at 12:22 PM with the headline "Editorial: County trashing residents’ willingness to recycle."