Opelika Environmental Services to kick off curbside recycling campaign next month
By Rebekah Martin
Associate Editor
Opelika Environmental Services will begin a grassroots campaign next month in efforts to boost its curbside recycling program.
Project Yellowtop will run through April and May and will offer new subscribers two free months of the service. Existing customers who refer the service to their friends, family and neighbors will also receive the discount.
Terry White, director of OES, said the campaign is a marketing effort to try to make the program sustainable. Curbside recycling came to Opelika more than a year ago and currently has about 700 customers. White said the goal for Project Yellowtop is to add 300 subscribers.
All curbside recycling customers receive a 95-gallon cart that is picked up bimonthly. OES accepts a variety of recyclable materials including cardboard, newspaper, magazines and other mixed paper, including junk mail and office paper, aluminum and steel cans and plastic bottles and jugs. Materials are taken to the single-stream recycling center in Columbus, Ga. which allows the recyclables to be mixed together.
Micah Melnick has been a curbside recycling subscriber since last spring, and she says the convenience of having a cart at her house has made a big impact on the materials she is able to recycle.
Melnick said she was not aware of how much could be recycled as opposed to thrown away until her family signed up for curbside recycling. “Having it right at our backdoor makes it easy to think twice before I toss something in the trash can … and of course that’s good for our environment and just being good stewards of what we have and making sure that what we can give back and can be turned into something new is done.”
For more information, call 705-5480. To sign up for curbside recycling, visit www.opelika.org.