PILOT PROGRAMS COMPLEMENT CITY RECYCLING EFFORT

The city continues to monitor pilot recycling programs designed to complement a curb-side recycling program implemented last fall to help Cape Girardeau comply with a new Missouri landfill law.

The state law calls for a 40 percent reduction by 1998 in the amount of solid wastes going to landfills.

Doug Kaminskey, the city's environmental services coordinator, said Sunday a pilot program to remove wooden pallets from the waste stream has proven relatively successful.

"One of the local companies here asked if we'd be interested in doing something with them on the pallets," he said. "They donated a sign for the pallet deposit site, and we started to take all their pallets."

The company, Spartech Plastic, has disposed of about 25,000 pounds of wooden pallets at the site at Shawnee Park. The pallets are available at the site, along with firewood and tree mulch, free to the public.

Kaminskey said the city cuts trees and brush it clears after storms or flood-control work into firewood, and the excess brush is mulched for use in gardens or for landscaping.

The pallet program has only been used in cooperation with Spartech, but Kaminskey said other companies could be added if the program proves successful.

"Right now, we want to see how many disappear before we start getting a bunch more," he said. "We started that a little over a month ago, and we've had at least four or five different loads of pallets that have been dropped off, so they're moving. There are definitely people using them."

The city also collected residents' Christmas trees after the holiday for additional mulch. The city asked that people with Christmas trees either deposit them at a site at Arena Park or call for a special collection.

"Quite a few people brought them into the Arena Park area, and we got a lot of calls on the collection as well," Kaminskey said. "But we still picked up over 600 trees that people just put out with the trash.

"Apparently those people didn't get the word, but we went ahead and picked them up anyway."

He said the mulch from the trees didn't last long as a number of people apparently took advantage of the free offer. But new mulch and firewood is added weekly to the Shawnee Park site, he said.

"There's some mulch down there that the city generated from chipping trees," he said.

"There's firewood down there we've gotten from street projects and flood work where we've cleared trees out of the creeks. We cut that into firewood and it generally disappears overnight."

Another pilot recycling program was started Jan. 27 at Chateau Girardeau, an apartment complex for elderly residents. Kaminskey said that program also appears to be successful.

"We're making a special collection of their recyclables, and it looks like an ongoing thing," he said. "There's pretty good participation and we're taking about a trailer a week out of there."

But another pilot project at Cape LaCroix Apartments hasn't fared as well, said Kaminskey.

"We had a drop-off trailer there for two months, but just didn't get enough participation to let the trailer sit there," he said. "We'll probably try another apartment site and get more publicity to see if it goes over a little better."

Kaminskey said that through the city-wide, curb-side recycling program, which started last October, and the pilot projects, about 175,000 pounds of materials were diverted in January from the landfill.

"We're real satisfied with participation, and the flow of materials, everything seems to be going real smooth," he said. "We're already looking to expand the program in the future."

Kaminskey said the city is studying the possibility of collecting corrugated cardboard from businesses. He said the market for recycled cardboard currently is good, but that processing the material involves a lot of labor.

Since recycling was started in October, a total of about 500,000 pounds, or 250 tons, of recyclables has been collected in the city.

City officials have said recycling in Cape Girardeau already has reduced by about 25 percent the amount of waste going to the landfill. Citizen participation in the volunteer recycling program averages about 30 percent weekly.