It was crunch time for the hospitality industry last week heading into the holiday weekend. Many local merchants found themselves having to make an eleventh-hour decision about how to recycle their glass bottles.
In the wake of budget cuts, the town-sponsored ABC recycling program, launched in February 2008 was scrapped by the public works department due to a loss of seasonal personnel. Public works director Mike Vukelich said the town was charging the merchants 25 percent of the actual cost of the program. Merchants who were paying $1.50 per 20-gallon container per collection are now looking at spending $40 per 32-gallon container.
They were notified two weeks in advance of the program’s official end on June 30 just days away from the highest-volume weekend of the year leaving them to scramble for a new provider.
“It would have been nice to have had more notice,” said John Andrews, owner, South Beach Grill. “This was a pilot program for the town and it just wasn’t working out. We face hard fiscal facts and we move along.”
The town’s sanitation department left its recycling collection receptacles in place through the holiday weekend.
“It was kind of them to do that,” Andrews said.
His was one of four businesses – including the Blockade Runner Resort, Shell Island and Wrightsville Grill – that signed on with Clifton Cash of Green Coast Recycling to provide the new service.
“He was not the numbers black-and-white choice,” Andrews said. “He was the do-the-right-thing choice for a lot of the merchants on the beach.”
Andrews said other companies from whom he solicited bids were cheaper and offered a commingling solution – throwing all recyclables into one container.
“Which oftentimes means they don’t recycle in the truest form,” Andrews said. “Clifton was the best choice for the merchants on the beach given his environmental commitment.”
The request for proposal, drafted by Andrews and Jason St. Clair, sales manager of the Blockade Runner Resort, with input shared during last month’s Wrightsville Beach Merchants Association (WBMA) meeting, asked the new provider to install, maintain and service remote recycling stations at public beach accesses and to co-sponsor WBMA and Surfrider-sponsored beach sweeps.
“We thought now was the best time of any to address the litter issue,” Andrews said.
The WBMA members are also working jointly to identify new providers of carry-out containers, pricing vegetable and hemp-based to-go ware and reusable bags. The problem, Andrews said is that the costs are prohibitive, sometimes four and five times the amount paid per item.Taking the lead from Keith Norris from Vito’s Pizzeria, Andrews said, they were negotiating with a nationwide company, trying to get as many customers on board to lower the cost and looking for alternatives to the single-use plastic bag.
Andrews serves on the Wilmington/Cape Fear Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau and St. Clair on the board of the Wrightsville Beach Chamber of Commerce. Both serve on the town’s Tourism and Development Authority Marketing Committee and hope to see the merchants’ recycling efforts morph into a social networking awareness and education program.
Cash, who has other accounts within the town limits said that his operation separates glass from aluminum, paper and cardboard but the merchants must adhere to several guidelines to insure the cleanliness of the recycling operation. Bins may not be overfilled, lids must fit snugly and more than minimal contamination of the container contents is prohibited. If water does seep into the container from negligence, then his crew will dump the byproduct into the restaurant’s grey water collection tank to avoid toxic stormwater runoff.
The recycling of glass containers for North Carolina ABC permit holders became a state-wide mandate on Jan. 1, 2008. The disposal of aluminum cans into the landfill was prohibited July 1, 1994, and the disposal of rigid plastics is coming Oct. 1.
