Trash Talk
for May 14, 2015
Howdy Folks! Hopefully, all Mothers enjoyed a beautiful Mothers Day this past Sunday! There are numerous gifts that Mothers receive, but a popular gift is flowers for the garden to brighten each day and to remind you of the love that came with those flowers! According to the meteorologists, Mother Nature is supposed to cooperate with some showers this week to provide those plants with the necessary moisture. Our Mothers Day was spent with family and friends celebrating son Matthew’s 40th birthday! When our children were younger they couldn’t wait to get to their teens and twenties; now, they are not so anxious to join the ’40 and over’ club, but time marches on and five of our children have reached that milestone! Congratulations to all celebrating May birthdays, anniversaries, marriages and other special events such as graduations that are quickly approaching! Be sure and take the time to enjoy the moments for the gifts of life that they are!
By the time you read this, all the roll-offs should be out of the county and we will be able to give you exact numbers for the tonnage and disposal costs of the debris and tires next week. While having these containers available for residents to use is a great help and convenience, the misuse of the dumpsters is frustrating and caring for them is time consuming. Citizen cooperation is necessary for this program to work and some folks just don’t seem to feel that the rules apply to them. Granted, we live in a society that is filled with rules and regulations, but they are meant to provide safety, fairness and ease of operation. These roll-offs are not a given and if the grant application is denied this year, then there will not be any containers available for the Fiscal Year 2015-16. If that is the case, then the old adage that ‘all good things must come to an end’ will apply. Our sincerest appreciation to each of you who use the dumpsters properly!
Our daily lives are filled with making choices and disposal of packaging, containers and end-of-life items is a ritual repeated many times each day. Determining where and how to dispose of these items is important and can make a huge difference for the environment, not only today, but for generations. To reduce the amount of garbage in landfills and to conserve natural resources, we should recycle as much as possible for the area in which we live. Paper, cardboard, #1 and #2 plastics, glass bottles and jars, steel and aluminum cans should be put into any one of the nine recycling trailers in the county. Appliances and metal can be dropped off on the lot behind the County Barn between the hours of 7 AM to 3:30 PM Monday thru Friday. Computers and all component parts is electronic scrap or e-scrap, and can be left outside our office of Solid Waste Management anytime or by appointment.
For unwanted clothing and household items, yard sales, Goodwill and Another Mans Treasure in Maysville or the Quarter Corner in Brooksville are good choices. The Women’s Crisis Center in Maysville has a wish list of acceptable items, both new and gently used. In some instances, a little repair work will make the item usable and taking the time to stitch a seam or replace a missing screw is all that’s necessary to rescue an item from the landfill! Please consider other options before sentencing cast offs to the landfill such as REUSING, REDUCING and REUSING to keep God’s earth clean, green and beautiful! Be seein’ you – Bin & Bug.
Trash Talk
for May 7, 2015
Howdy Folks! We need help! How can we make folks understand that NO TIRES in the roll-offs means that there should not be any tires put into them? Last week on Thursday morning the County Road Department removed 33 tires from the dumpster located in Powersville and they repeated the ritual on Friday morning removing 29 tires! Ms. Donna Rath, Administrative Secretary for the Bracken County Soil Conservation District, takes the time and effort to write the grant application that supplies the money for the county to obtain dumpsters for citizen usage. For those of you who have never applied for a grant from the federal or state government, it is a process that requires a list of instructions, research for data, explanations to seemingly non-related questions, signatures and approvals from immediate supervisors and then on to its destination where the application may or may not be approved!
Once approved, Ms. Rath gives us the okay to call the Mason County Landfill to establish times and locations for the dumpsters and guess what? Bracken County is not their only customer! Mason County Landfill is a small operation but it maintains a fleet of approximately 71 roll-offs of 20, 30 and 40-yard containers with two trucks and two drivers handling all the deliveries and pickups. These roll-offs can be seen as far away as Vanceburg, in Lewis County, Ripley and West Union in Adams and Brown Counties Ohio, and Mason, Fleming, Bracken, Nicholas and Robertson Counties locally. Plus, the two trucks and drivers are responsible for hauling four Mason County recycling trailers when they need to be emptied! Anyone who owns a vehicle knows that on occasion, that vehicle will need maintenance work or repair. If either of those two trucks become disabled, then scheduling deliveries and pickups far and wide becomes even more challenging!
Once we call for a delivery, there are no guarantees that removal of a filled roll-off will be immediate! As children, we learned to wait for our turn and this concept still applies in our adult lives! We are not the only one needing a delivery or pickup so we cooperate and wait for our turn! Trash is overflowing and surrounding the dumpster at Powersville this Monday morning yet folks continue to set trash out! The County Road Department will need to get the dumpster ready by loading the debris and pushing down the load. Unfortunately, our turn will not be until sometime Tuesday so we can only hope that no one else will pile their trash around this dumpster which is located on private property! Our sincerest appreciation to Mr. Bobby Downard for allowing the County to place a dumpster on his Powersville property!
All of the paperwork for each of these transactions must be recorded and copied so that we can get Ms. Rath the disposal receipts and tire receipts must be given to Ms. Tina Teegarden, Administrative Assistant, for payment by the County. All we ask is that you use the dumpsters according to the Rules and Regulations as stipulated by the Mason County Landfill! Everyone agrees that having roll-offs available for citizens to use for excess or bulky trash is a good deal and we sincerely appreciate those of you who abide by the rules! Sometime this week a roll-off will be located on the hill below Snappy Pizza in Brooksville and on the Park and Ride lot on the AA Highway at Johnsville. When we all work together, great things happen, especially when we RECYCLE, REUSE and REDUCE to keep God’s earth clean, green and beautiful! Be seein’ you – Bin & Bug.
Trash Talk
for April 30, 2015
Howdy Folks! Can you believe that one third of 2015 is history and it’s already time for the Kentucky Derby this Saturday! Not that we could even tell you the name of one horse in the derby, but when you live in Kentucky, the minimum requirement is to at least know the date of Derby Day! Thunder Over Louisville was held April 18 with the annual world’s largest fireworks display beginning derby related festivities that culminate with the 141st Run for the Roses! Of the 140 races, 106 winning horses were from Kentucky. During these events, organizers have continually upgraded their efforts to recycle with bins conveniently located throughout the complex. In 2014 a total of 12.12 million tons of paper, cans, cups, bottles, food waste and any other recyclable items were collected! Visitors from around the globe attend this yearly event but being a Kentucky native with a TV set gets us as close to the Derby as we care to be! But for those of you who will be in the crowd this weekend, we hope you have a most enjoyable adventure and urge you to use your good Bracken County knowledge of recycling!
Adventurous should not be a word that we use to describe the experiences of Bracken County’s Litter Patrol Groups as they clean roads around the area, so please use caution when you encounter these hard working groups! They are spring cleaning for Mother Nature and picking up after some citizens who have developed the very bad habit of littering! With the grass getting taller, the litter is not as visible, but the litter becomes very evident as the road departments begin their yearly mowing tasks! Roughly 85 to 90% of all litter is actually recyclable material, so if you develop the recycling habit, the bad littering habit will become extinct!
Keep America Beautiful organization and the Ad Council are joining forces with Unilever to get more folks to recycle containers and cardboard found in bathrooms. Most recycling projects concentrate on items found in the kitchen, but efforts are being made to introduce a container for bathroom recycling. Hair care product bottles, lotions, baby oils, toilet paper rolls, toothpaste and other product boxes are all recyclable. Studies have shown that readily available containers for saving these items for recycling is the key to a successful bathroom recycling program, but please, no toilet paper! We have found this item in the trailers on numerous occasions and it is not pleasant! Only the cardboard roll can be put into the trailers!
With improving weather conditions, we will be obtaining two roll-offs from the Mason County Landfill that should be in place by the time you are reading this. Locations will be behind the Firehouse/Community Building in Germantown and on Mr. Bobby Downard’s lot in Powersville. Rules and regulations remain the same with no tires, liquids, appliances, brush, hazardous wastes or closed drums allowed in the dumpsters. Because of cutbacks in funding, there will only be four or five roll-offs for this spring clean, so please load the dumpsters as evenly as possible to allow maximum usage of the containers by as many citizens as possible. Your cooperation is a must for this program to continue!
Happy Birthday wishes are extended to County Road Supervisor Stacy Florer for Monday, May 4! May he and everyone else enjoying a May birthday be blessed! Blessings also to all of you who daily exercise the necessary habits of RECYCLING, REUSING and REDUCING to keep God’s earth clean, green and beautiful! Be seein’ you – Bin & Bug.
Trash Talk
for February 5, 2015
Howdy Folks! This Monday we celebrate Groundhog’s Day and wait anxiously for Punxsutawney Phil’s predicition of early spring or six more weeks of winter! As with many of our holidays and traditions, Groundhog’s Day has both pagan and religious roots! Our ancestors did not have meteorologists monitoring the skies with radar but instead relied on their observances of nature and how the sun, moon, stars, plants and animals acted and reacted to changing weather conditions. German immigrants brought to the new world the tradition of observing the hedgehog’s awakening from its winter hibernation to predict how long the winter would last. Since the groundhog closely resembled their homeland’s hedgehog, they chose to watch the groundhog’s emergence from its burrow. Sunny days allowed the animal to cast a shadow and that was an omen for six more weeks of bad weather. If no shadow was seen, that meant winter was nearly over! Farmers may still today mark February 2 as winter’s midpoint to gauge their hay supply relying on the old adage “Groundhog’s Day – Half your hay!” Cold, snowy and icy days are still ahead, but Easter is just two short months away so let’s enjoy each day and the weather it brings!
Recently we have had a couple of questions that we would like to address, one concerning the proper disposal of paint. Paint must be solidified in order for Rumpke to take it in the normal trash pickup. There are two reasons for this – landfills are not allowed to dispose of liquids and secondly, the garbage company is responsible for roadway spills. So if there’s not too much paint left in the container, the lid can be removed to allow the paint to air dry, but make sure the cans are out of reach of children and pets. Once dried, the lids can be replaced and the cans thrown in with the weekly household garbage. For larger amounts of paint, kitty litter, old rags, dirt, and shredded paper are some things that can be put into the paint to absorb the liquid and make it safe for disposal. There is also a product made by Krud Kutter known as Waste Paint/Colorant Hardener which can be mixed with the paint to produce solidified paint to allow proper disposal with Rumpke. There are probably other companies that make similar products but the Krud Kutter brand is the one we are familiar with.
Another question concerned plastic recycling. Since we had not talked to the manager of the Recycling Center for quite some time about acceptable plastics, we gave him a quick call. He confirmed the acceptance of only plastics with the number “1” or the number “2” in the chasing arrows recycling symbol located on the bottom of plastic containers. Milk jugs, water and beverage bottles, laundry products, some cleaning products and some frozen food containers use the one and two plastics. There are other products out there with those numbers, but these are the main ones. While there are toys and household plastic products that have the numbers one or two in the chasing arrows symbol, but these cannot be accepted at the Mason County Recycling Center, only household containers and nothing larger than a 5-gallon bucket is accepted. There are several reasons for this, but the bottom line is that the size of the Center, equipment and storage space negates taking any plastics other than those listed. We appreciate everyone who takes the time and makes the effort to RECYCLE, REUSE and REDUCE to keep God’s earth clean, green and beautiful! Be seein’ you – Bin & Bug.