The Fulton County Solid Waste District is imploring the public to aid them in sorting recyclables at the drop-off sites as mounting trash continues to be a concern.
The following post was made on the district's Facebook page:
Sorry for the long read but we are trying to get people's attention!
If you are reading this, please share!!!
I want to start off by saying that we have some amazing recyclers in Fulton County. But with that being said, we have been dealing with a tremendous amount of unsorting and trash at ALL of our drop-off sites. We always have and continue to require that all of your recyclables be sorted into the proper bins on our trailers.
As I mentioned above, most of our recyclers do any amazing job but it is the few people out there that don’t like to follow the rules and seem to be ruining it for others.
As most of you are aware, Kosciusko County has pulled all of their drop off recycling locations in their county due to the rising cost and the large amounts of trash being dumped at each location. We here at Fulton County Solid Waste have seen an increase in the use of some of our drop off sites and at our facility which is great. The problems we are running into are that Kosciusko County drop off sites didn’t require sorting of recyclables, but we do! We try to make recycling in this county as convenient as possible and ask that everyone do their part on the sorting end of it. We only have so much manpower to operate our facility (as every business does) and would appreciate it if everyone takes the time to sort their items.
This is a free service that we offer, and we want to keep it that way for all of our residents. Which leads me to my next point.
Fulton County Solid Waste District is NOT tax funded (we do not receive any money from the residents of this county to operate our facility as most people think we do). 75% of our funding comes from the landfill here in our county.
While a lot of people complain about the landfill here, what they don’t realize is that our landfill is a blessing in many ways. The more we can recycle and keep out of the landfill, the longer the landfill will be around to continue to help fund programs in this county. Some of the programs that we provide for FREE to all Fulton County residents include 4-Tire Collection Day’s thru-out the year, Electronics’ disposal, Household Hazardous Waste disposal, Refrigerated Appliance Disposal, Fluorescent Lighting & Mercury Disposal, Batteries, Used Oil & Antifreeze (these items need to be brought into our facility). Along with offering all residents 8 convenient 24-hour drop off locations for their normal recycling.
We need more people to start recycling correctly so we can preserve the space in our landfill so that they can continue to help fund these programs. Without the landfill funding, the cost of these programs will be passed on to the residents on their tax bills. So please everyone, we are asking that if and when you do your recycling, take the extra time to sort your material. We also realize that not everything is recyclable, if it is trash, you need to do the proper thing and dispose of it in the trash not in our trailers. Your Trash is Your Responsibility, not ours! We do offer a trash disposal program along side our recycling programs. It consists of buying trash bags from our facility and then when they are full, you bring them to us and we dispose of them. If you are interested in this program, please contact us for more details or if you have any questions about what we take, 574-223-4939.
The last thing we want to do is pull all of our recycling drop-off sites, but if people keep abusing the free privilege we offer, we will be forced to do something different. We have contemplated making our sites manned drop-off sites and only having trailers at the sites on certain days and certain times so we can monitor our trailers. We do not want to go this route because it would be a big inconvenience for everyone.
So again, we are asking for everyone to please sort your items and do not dump trash on us.
