- Project Type: Cart Rollout
- Total HH Served: 17,000
- Projected New Tons/Year: 1,624
- Year: 2016
In 2016, we partnered with the City of Greenville, SC as they transitioned from bins to carts. Some of the highlights from this work were:
- Rolling out carts to every household in the community
- Establishing a weekly, automated recycling collection cycle
- Adding plastic containers (types 3-7) to their accepted materials
By leveraging funds from The Recycling Partnership, Greenville residents received carts, technical assistance, and educational and outreach materials to guide them from a manual collection in 18-gal. bins to automated collection in 96-gal. carts.
Greenville’s goals were to improve employee safety, lower program costs, streamline operations and increase participation. Since launching the “All In. Recycling Simplified.” campaign, the city’s participation rate has increased to a whopping 70 percent. Their overall tonnage has risen with participation, and they’ve capped the contamination rate to under 15 percent. Further, no recycling employee has been injured on the job since implementing the automated collection.
During this process, Greenville had to take glass out of their recycling stream. Even with this removal, they saw recyclables increase by 100 lbs. per household one year after moving to carts.
City Council Members Gaye Sprague and Amy Ryberg Doyle, both Greenville City Council members, recently told the Greenville Journal that “the changes we have made to our recycling program are expected to save taxpayers approximately $2 million over the next 10 years.”