ATHENS - Saturday, Athens County residents pitched in to do their part in keeping recyclable trash out of local landfills.
Between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., residents arrived at the Athens County Fairgrounds to drop off their recycling. While many residents are familiar with curbside recycling, which takes bottles, cans and paper, these are not the only items that can be recycled.
According to Maria Bonner of Rural Action, Recycle Days serves as a way to educate the community about what can and can’t be recycled.
“People use it as an opportunity, especially if they don’t exactly know what can be recycled and what can’t,” Bonner said. “And so they bring things for recycling and then we can figure out whether it’s recyclable or not.”
Items collected for recycling at Recycle Days that are not collected curbside include electronics, batteries and lightbulbs. These need to be kept out of landfills, as they can eat through landfill liners and leach harmful chemicals into groundwater. They also contain valuable glass and metals that can be recycled into new products.
Other items collected at Recycle Days include books, mattresses, furniture and clothes. These items are sorted through and either resold or recycled.
Rural Action also takes used medical equipment such as crutches, hospital beds and wheelchairs, which are distributed to those in the area who need them. Last year, Rural Action redistributed 5,000 pounds of used medical equipment throughout Southeastern Ohio.
Previous Recycle Days also collected tires for recycling, though this was not the case at Saturday’s event. Between October 2023 and July 2024, the Athens-Hocking Solid Waste District recycled enough tires to fill 13 semi-trucks.
“We hire a company to come and bring a semi-truck and then they take it back to their plant in Canal Winchester and they grind them,” District Director of the Athens-Hocking Solid Waste District Jane Forrest Redfern said.
Depending on how finely ground the tires are, they can be used to make playground equipment or outdoor rubber flooring. Sometimes, tires are burned in cement kilns as refuse-derived fuel, though this is not the case with tires collected by the Athens-Hocking Solid Waste District.
“That would not be considered recycling, that’d be waste-to-energy, which is not the same.”
Scrap metal is collected during Recycle Days by Habitat for Humanity in partnership with McKee Auto Parts of New Marshfield. This scrap is often in the form of old appliances such as refrigerators, washing machines and dryers that are too large to collect curbside. The proceeds from the sale of the scrap are used by Habitat for Humanity to build houses.
Another company that participates in Recycle Days is Cincinnati-based Rumpke Waste & Recycling. In 2021, Rumpke acquired the Athens-Hocking Landfill in Nelsonville. The company has an extensive recycling program and is also investing in an extensive methane capture system at the Athens-Hocking Landfill.
Rumpke brought two trucks to the Athens County Fairgrounds to collect non-recyclable materials for disposal at its landfill. Rumpke employee Scott Swiney has been working for the company for four years and has seen people throw away everything from horse manure to appliances and even adult toys. Nevertheless, Swiney always looks forward to Recycle Days because they give him a chance to interact with and give back to the community.
“I love it. Recycling, trash, I just love working here. It’s great.”
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