Pike County kicked off a short-term recycling project at the beginning of October that could be extended into 2015 if officials can round up the funding.
McComb Mayor Whitney Rawlings is on a crusade to increase recycling in the county by asking other municipalities, county supervisors and the state for contributions to expand the existing project that ends March 31.
When Pike County Recycles began, Rawlings hoped the end result would be curbside recycling in 2015. Now, he is making the rounds to the different boards in the upcoming weeks asking for different amounts from each.
Pike County supervisors unanimously voted to give $7,500 to the project. Rawlings also will ask Magnolia and Summit for $1,000 each and $500 from Osyka. McComb will vote whether to give $7,500 to the project Tuesday.
Rawlings hopes the bulk of the funding will come from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality. The mayor is asking for about $123,000 to combine with the $17,500 projected from the four towns and the county.
During the first month of the existing project, McComb residents rallied together and recycled 4.65 tons of materials in October. Rawlings hopes to have the city up to 8 tons per month by March and continue growing that number throughout the following year.
“By putting the other containers in the other communities, maybe we can grow to 15 tons a month of recyclables,” Rawlings said. “Then, we could have confidence that at least 25 percent of our citizens would participate in curbside recycling, which is the national average.”
If successful, this project would run from April 1, 2014, to March 31, 2015. Soon after, the existing Waste Management solid waste contracts for McComb and Pike County expire and could be renegotiated to add curbside recycling.
Rawlings said Brookhaven recently added curbside recycling to its contract and ended up saving money.
Part of the MDEQ grant would cover adding and renting a single-stream recycling container in Magnolia, Osyka and Summit. The container in McComb has a compactor, but the new containers would not because there are no more available in this region.
The monies also would go toward paying the $30,000 salary of a project manager Rawlings wants to implement who would inspect the four containers and oversee the recycling effort countywide.
The effort needed most in conjunction with the recycling is the education about its importance, Rawlings said.
“To have successful recycling, if we’re ever going to have it here, we have to educate our people about it,” he said. “We’re doing that with this program today, and I’d like to carry it out into 2015.”
