City announces change to recycling program

The City of Greenville announced today that effective April 1, it will no longer accept glass for recycling at the curb or at its Stone Avenue and Rutherford Road recycling centers. Like Greenville County and other municipalities, the City also uses Pratt Industries, the only remaining Material Recovery Facility in the Upstate, which has already stopped accepting glass from its other customers.

In spite of this unplanned change to the program, the City is still scheduled to transition to an automated recycling collection system this summer. The new collection system is safer than the current manual system, which uses traditional rear loader vehicles, and is designed to improve the efficiency of the City’s operations and equipment and increase recycling participation. The City will begin distributing new 96-gallon recycle roll carts to all residential customers in May, and in addition to increasing the volume of materials that residents will be able to recycle curbside, the City also plans to increase the types of plastic materials that it collects this summer.

“Historically, glass has accounted for between 12 and 20 percent of the materials collected through our recycling program,” said Mike Murphy, the City’s Public Works Department director. “While we will no longer be able to provide that specific option for our citizens, we are still committed to working with them to reduce the amount of materials going into the landfill by making recycling in the city as simple and convenient as possible.”

Going forward, the City will continue to accept mixed paper, cardboard, paperboard, aluminum, steel and plastic for recycling at the curb. Residents can also recycle scrap metal, appliances and tires at the curb by placing them outside their recycling container. Additionally, since state law prohibits recycling electronics at the curb, the City also holds two “e-waste” recycling events every year to provide citizens with an opportunity to recycle unwanted TVs, computers and computer components.

Last year, the City received a $125,000 grant from national recycling nonprofit The Recycling Partnership, which helps communities transform their recycling programs through technical support, education programs and city grants. A portion of the grant will help fund a public education and awareness campaign about the new automated system over the next two months. The City also received funding for the campaign from the SC Department of Health & Environmental Control through the RecycleMore coalition, which was established to help South Carolina meet or exceed a recycling goal of 40% set for 2020.