Recycling To No Longer Be Separated At Convenience Sites in Stephens

Starting next week, Stephens County’s convenience sites will no longer be set up to allow county residents to recycle.

Tuesday, Stephens County Commissioners unanimously passed a motion that county convenience sites will no longer separate out recyclable items from household garbage at the county’s convenience sites starting on April 1.

Stephens County Administrator Phyllis Ayers said the convenience site attendants have had to focus on recyclable item issues, which has taken their attention away at times from the garbage compactors.

Ayers said that those convenience site attendants instead need to be focused on the compactors.

“When the compactor gets something other than household garbage in that compactor, it will shut down and we have issues where the workers have to try to clean it out,” said Ayers. “It gets picked up not at full capacity, which costs the county more money every time that it is picked up under a certain amount of tonnage.”

After April 1, Ayers said there will no longer be an area for county residents to recycle at their convenience sites and any recyclable items will be put into the compactor with the household garbage.

According to Ayers, up until now, recyclable items at the county’s convenience sites have been collected by or transported to the city of Toccoa, who has turned those recyclable items in and received the revenue.

Ayers said the county is making the operational change to avoiding spending manpower on something for which the county does not receive any revenue.

She added that she reached out to the city about having county residents take their recyclables directly to the city, but found that was not an option because the city did not have that level of manpower either.

Ayers said that the county does not have the resources to handle recycling itself either.

She also said this is just another in a long line of operational and personnel changes that Stephens County government has implemented over the last several years.

“Since 2009, because of a declining digest and (declining) property tax revenue, we have been in a constant state of looking for operational changes,” said Ayers.

She also noted the county has laid off employees over that time and combined several positions.

Ayers said the motion passed Tuesday by county commissioners does not affect the hours of operation at any of the convenience sites and will not mean any personnel cuts.