Recycling Spotlighted at Mesquite Days

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

One of the many booths at the Mesquite Days celebration last weekend was there to inform the public about the city’s well-intentioned, yet lightly used, recycling program.

The informational booth was done partly in response to the efforts of one Mesquite resident who is pushing to expand the city’s recycling efforts. Ron Shackelford is concerned that the people of Mesquite are not recycling enough; and he suspects that this is because not enough people know about the program.

“I feel like this is a big deal,” Shackelford said in an interview last week. “Researchers estimate that more than 9.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced since the early 1950s. About 60 percent of that has ended up in either a landfill or in a natural environment.”

Shackelford has done a little research of his own on plastic use in the Mesquite community. He took an informal poll of the major grocery stores in town to see how many plastic water bottles they sell each day. The number came in at around 12,000 bottles per day; during the cooler months. In the summer it is likely double that, Shackelford said.

“In my calculations, with Smith’s alone, they are selling about 4.4 million bottles of water each year,” Shackelford said. “If you add Walmart into that it is more like 9 million bottles. And that isn’t even counting sports drinks, energy drinks and sodas.”

Shackelford believes that the overwhelming majority of that plastic is going – not into recycling bins – but to the city’s landfill, located just north of Mesquite in Lincoln County.

The City’s numbers seem to bear that out. A report given by Anderson to City Council in March put the number of residents who participate in the City’s recycle program at only 3-5 percent.
“That is a lot of plastic and other recyclables going into the landfill,” Shackelford said. “And that is bound to end up causing problems for us later on. People need to know about that.”

So Shackelford has been driving the city staff to start a public information campaign about the city’s recycle program to increase participation.
The program has been in place since the early 2000s and it is provided as a free service to local residents.

It consists of two parts. The first is residential curbside pickup and the second is through centrally located recycling dumpster bins where people can bring their recycling.

The curbside service offers each single family home two free recycling containers. One 35 gallon container is for aluminum and other metals. The other container of the same size is for newsprint and other paper.

Pickup of these containers takes place once a month on a rotating basis. The metal/aluminum containers get picked up on the first Wednesday of each month. The paper containers are picked up on the third Wednesday.

There is no charge for the curbside recycling service. Residents can sign up for the service by calling 702-345-7900.

The centrally located recycle bins are placed in the parking lots at both Walmart and Smiths. At these locations there are two 30 yard dumpsters available to the public for recycling. One of these is divided for people to sort aluminum, plastic and newspaper items. The other bin is for corrugated cardboard only.

A detailed flyer about the city’s recycling program is available at mesquitenv.gov/resources/garbage-and-sewer.