Waste Connections of Tennessee Inc., the garbage collector for the city of Knoxville, is making a curbside-recycling program available for city residents, Mayor Bill Haslam announced today.
"I hope city residents will sign up and support curbside recycling as a way to reduce the amount of waste being deposited in landfills," said Mayor Haslam. "I applaud Waste Connections' work to offer this service at an economical price to households in Knoxville."
The monthly charge for every other week service is $3.50 per month for curbside pick-up or $9 per month for back-door service. Cost of the 18-gallon recycling bin is $10.
Waste Connections will begin Oct. 1 placing door hangars advertising the service to the first group of 6,300 homes. Then beginning Nov. 1, Waste Connections will start curbside pick-up for those customers within the first group who have subscribed to the service, and advertise to the next group of 6,300 homes. This will be an ongoing process until all 57,000 households in the city are contacted, said Benson Henry, general manager of Waste Connections of Tennessee.
"New routes will be selected from each area of the city - East, West, South, North and Northwest Knoxville - every month," Henry said.
Staggering the launch of the service will allow Waste Connections to control volume and manage of the purchase of capital equipment in an economic fashion, Henry said.
Recyclable materials that may be left for curbside pick-up include newspapers, most plastics, aluminum and steel cans, and clear, green and brown glass. Residents are not required to sort the materials.
The recyclables are processed at SP Recycling Corp.'s Knoxville facility for marketing to manufacturers who use the recyclables as raw material for their products.
"Waste Connections' curbside pick up is the link that makes recycling convenient for consumers and we hope many will take advantage of this program," said Becky Ford, division manager for SP Recycling Corp.
Recycling Facts from Waste Connections of Tennessee Inc. Every ton of recycled paper saves 7,000 gallons of water, 17 trees, 4,100 kilowatts of electricity and 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space. Printing and writing papers comprise 14 percent of all landfill space. The United States uses 50 million tons of paper each year, which equates to 850 million trees. Each hour, 2.5 million plastic bottles are consumed. Recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to keep a 100-watt light bulb lit for four hours. The energy savings from recycled aluminum cans in 1988 was enough to supply the power needs of a city the size of Boston for one year.