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Are We Throwing Away Macon’s Future?
As Macon’s landfill nears capacity, the city searches for ways to save it.
 It's the light they believe kills.
We drink and load again, let them crawl
for all they're worth into the darkness we're headed for.
– David Bottoms, from Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump
Traveling south on Poplar, Macon unravels in layers of sequentially numbered streets that conjure comparisons to Dante’s Inferno, each intersection revealing a new level of disrepair. The relative posh of First Street’s surroundings is nothing akin to the rusted, industrial environs of Seventh. Deeper in, even less of downtown’s renaissance is visible. A junkyard. Ramshackle pavement. Empty and decaying factories. Just beyond this, on a long, narrow dirt road lined by pools of dark, viscous water, the landfill rises up above the trees. From atop, it offers, without a doubt, the very best view of the city.
As bizarre as this may seem, the some of the scenery has actually improved over the years. Federal and state regulations transformed this swampy, lower half of town from a widespread dump into one centralized, organized location. Before the changes, as recently as the 1960s, locals took their garbage to Eleventh Street where it was burned in piles. The constant, odorous fire spewed ashes and smoke that covered the area like a thick, black fog. As each truckload entered, scavengers emerged from the cracks and crevices to salvage what they could from the refuge.
Bill Causey, Macon’s Public Works director, remembers well the trips his family took to the dump. “It was like Hades.”
A Macon native who now oversees the landfill, Causey can appreciate the progress that has made just as he knows what must be done for the future.
“Seven years may be generous,” he says in reference to the landfill’s expected lifespan. Though he is about to undertake a survey for a more precise estimate, Causey’s statement underscores the need to do something.
The City of Macon’s Director of External Affairs, Andrew Blascovich, puts it this way, “The landfill is quickly filling up, and until a new site is successfully found and prepared, we must maximize our conservation efforts to extend the life of the current landfill site.”
As the landfill nears its expiration, which will not only require the opening of a new landfill but also a $17 million closing procedure, the most popular choice for extending its life is also the most logical: recycling.
But is it too little too late?
No one seems to know exactly how much more time recycling could add to the landfill, but the State of Georgia estimates that 30-40% of all materials in municipal landfills are reclaimable. At the point where seven years may be considered “generous”, every little bit helps. And obviously, if the city recycling program had continued, we’d be in a less dire situation, albeit just slightly.
In July 2004, former Mayor C. Jack Ellis, under a budget crunch, ended citywide curbside recycling, a program that began in 1992. The choice wasn’t a popular one, but there was little anyone could do to stop it.
City Councilman Rick Hutto says, “I didn’t want to do away with it in the first place, but we were not really given a choice. Mayor Ellis just removed it from the budget.”
At the time, the program required sanitation workers to separate recyclables so each different category—paper, plastic, glass, metals—could be put in their respective cart on a train-like vehicle that ran routes through Macon. It was labor-intensive, time-consuming and costly. But it was the best option at the time.
“Does it really make sense for us to continue putting recyclables into the landfill? No. I’d argue that we need to be a little smarter,” Hutto says. “It would be nice to base this decision on whether it is the right thing to do, but frankly, we must decide if it is the financially prudent thing to do.”
Understandably, if money was the root of recycling’s demise, money is where the discussions to revive recycling begins.
Enter Gigi Cabell, who was tasked with finding money for recycling when none had been budgeted in a city with little to spare. As Grants Director, this is where Cabell excels. The first step, however, was to uncover a cost-efficient way to bring curbside recycling back. Since all of the city’s equipment had been sold off when recycling was scraped, this became even more vital. Macon could not just go back to doing as it had before, not without monumental start-up funding.
With heavy help from Macon Iron—particularly the drive and determination of Evan Koplin and Laurie Sikora—city officials learned of a process called single stream recycling, which essentially means that the old days of sorting at the curb had become obsolete. With single stream, residents wheel their recyclables out to where sanitation workers load and compact it, carrying it back to be sorted by machine at one of four regional recycling collection hubs. In its simplest terms, this means no new equipment for the city to purchase and considerably less labor than before.
Once the ball started rolling, things moved fairly quickly. Cabell secured $50,000 from the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority (GEFA) to fund the purchase of 1,300 65-gallon rollaway containers for a pilot program. She had sought more from GEFA and didn’t receive it, but Wal-Mart stepped in to offer $10,000 to help cover that shortfall. At approximately $43 a pop, almost the entire balance will go to pay for the rollaway containers alone.
Though there is no specific data about community participation for officials to use today (“If it ever existed, it isn’t here now,” Causey says), the two neighborhoods chosen for the pilot program, Vineville and Intown, have traditionally participated the most in the past. In fact, the city’s first program was due, in large part to the late Gus Kauffman, an Intown resident who first helped start a volunteer program in his neighborhood and later did the same at Carlyle Place, donating that money to employees of the retirement home. More recently, the Vineville Neighborhood Association polled its residents and found almost 100% plan to participate. Some even offered, upon hearing that some households would not receive a rollaway container, to pay for their own.
As is, the program will send out two two-man crews on their routes every Friday. Residents will put their plastics, paper and metals in the large rolling bin for pick up by a regular truck that has been cleaned out and sanitized for this purpose. “We’ll probably put ‘Recycling’ on the side so people don’t think we’re just throwing it in the garbage,” Causey jokes. Because glass must be separated into colors and has a tendency to break, making separation nearly impossible, those recyclables must be taken to a drop-off point.
According to Sandra Yates, Macon Public Works, the pilot program will last a year and is designed to gather data on the tonnage, time spent, and amount of collected categories, as well as hashing out other logistical issues. Yates says they hope to begin by July 1st, but that date is not yet firm because the city must solicit bids for the containers, purchase them and then wait on them to be shipped.
Though this new data will be crucial to expanding the curbside-recycling program citywide, Causey cautions that if it isn’t in the city’s budget, it won’t matter. The pilot program will affect only 1,300-1,700 homes out of the 27,000 that Public Works services.
Asked if there is enough support on City Council to fund the program citywide once the pilot program is over, Hutto is careful, stating it would be best to wait until the information comes in. But, he adds, “If we can make it work financially, so long as the data is there, I’m confident we can make our argument.”
Likewise, an argument—a controversial argument—can be made that the quickest and perhaps best way to provide citywide curbside recycling would be through privatizing Macon’s garbage collection. When Bill Causey became interim director of Public Works, his number one mandate from Mayor Ellis was to solicit bids for possible privatization, sort through them and make a recommendation.
The request for proposal (RFP) required each bidding company to agree to the following restrictions: citywide curbside recycling must included, current Public Works employees must be retained for one year, and the city’s equipment must be purchased. Of the competing companies, Causey and his committee selected Waste Pro, a group from Athens, GA, who wants to break into the Middle Georgia market as bridge to their operations in Florida.
In addition to agreeing to the aforementioned terms, Waste Pro has also offered to lease the Public Works building for $10,000 a month and take over management of the city landfill. They’ve also stated that they would likely hire additional staff to handle the increased demands for the labor involved in recycling. All this while only charging $12 a month—three dollars less than the city currently charges residents.
Like Hutto, councilman Tom Ellington is an ardent supporter of citywide recycling, but each approaches privatization cautiously. Ellington says, “I am always openly skeptical of privatization.” Though he is open to the possibility, he says he is aware of the sensitive areas it touches. His concerns are that the quality of garbage collection may decline, that city employees would not be treated fairly, and he questions whether this is simply a short-term solution and how it may affect the long-term. For the time being, the question of privatization remains in Mayor Reichert’s hands.
So what about the rest of Macon’s eco-friendly residents? Will they just have to wait to begin recycling?
No. It may be a while before curbside recycling is enacted citywide, but in the meantime, there are other options. For one, the city has continued to collect newspapers and magazines. For the other materials, like glass, plastic and cardboard, Macon Iron has a collection center at its Seventh Street location.
The proceeds from those collections go to fund the Youth Actors Company at Theatre Macon, and according to Laurie Sikora, Macon Iron will continue those donations as long as people continue to use their drop-off point. Macon Iron has also promised $5,000 for public education efforts, which advocates argue is vital to successful programs.
As Sikora stands at the collection point explaining the process, four cars drive up and unload—each inside of just fifteen minutes. One of those, Randy Battle, is a Bibb County resident, who often brings his loads to Macon Iron during lunch despite the fact that Bibb County presently offers curbside recycling. For him, with the volume he accumulates, it just makes more sense.
“It’s amazing how much less garbage I throw away after I bring my recyclables here,” Battle says.
Aside from individuals like Battle, Sikora notes that there already are neighborhoods who have designated members that collect recyclables and bring them to the drop-off point. Making it easy for people to use these facilities and get involved is the whole goal.
“We try to remove every obstacle someone could have to recycling. We want it to be so easy that everyone does it,” she says, pointing out that attitudes have changed dramatically in the last fifteen years, both towards recycling and about Macon. “The whole city has a vibe now. Everyone seems to be getting on the same page. It’s really exciting.”
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