Carter County and the City of Elizabethton recently received state grants to help with recycling and waste reduction efforts.
The grant funds are distributed through the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation as a way to help counties and cities reduce their waste and improve their recycling operations.
Carter County and Elizabethton each received a $25,000 grant to be used for the purchase of recycling collection containers. Carter County also received a $37,600 used oil grant.
Elizabethton has no recycling center of its own, so the city currently partners with the county in recycling efforts. The city provides collection containers that its citizens can use to recycle paper, cardboard and plastic and staff from the Carter County Landfill picks up the materials and transports them to the county’s Recycling Center.
Last year, the city opened a recycling convenience center at the intersection of Mill Street and S. Lynn Avenue in the Blackbottom area.
All of the recyclable materials collected in the city and county are sorted and stored at the Recycling Center until there are enough materials to be sold. Selling the materials makes the county’s recycling program self-sustaining and it also helps to generate funds for the landfill operations. Additionally, the landfill is aided through the recycling program because materials which are recycled would have ended up in the landfill without the program.
The used oil grant will also be very beneficial for the county’s recycling operation.
“The oil grant is going to allow us to accept used oil at Elk Mills,” Landfill Manager Benny Lyons said.
The landfill opened a new convenience center in Elk Mills in 2015. The site offered trash collection as well as recycling containers, but when the site opened Lyons said he hoped to be able to add oil collection there eventually. The recycling program also has used oil collection containers at the Recycling Center, the main landfill and the Roan Mountain convenience center.
“The grant’s going to allow us to redo the one in Roan Mountain with the shed and tanks and make it a little more customer friendly,” Lyons said. “We will be able to redo the one at the landfill as well.”
The grants received by Carter County and Elizabethton were part of more than $2 million in grants announced by TDEC to help reduce landfill waste in Tennessee..
“These projects will provide opportunities for counties and municipalities across the state to enhance their waste reduction and recycling infrastructure,” TDEC Commissioner Bob Martineau said. “The recycling equipment grants especially assist local governments in avoiding landfill costs, resulting in economic advantages for communities and the state.”