Wrightsville Beach leaders are not opposed to reinstating curbside recycling as a way to reduce the town’s contributions to the county landfill but they agreed to wait until the town hires a replacement for retiring public works director Mike Vukelich.
Most potential vendors are interested in implementing curbside recycling if it includes trash pick-up, town manager Tim Owens said during the Jan. 12 board retreat, duties currently performed by the town’s public works department.
“You can’t bring a guy into public works and then take away part of his job,” Wrightsville Beach Mayor Bill Blair said. “Hire your person first, and then he can be a part of that process.”
Outsourcing sanitation would also affect the town’s seven sanitation employees, who, Mayor Pro-Tem Darryl Mills said, consistently do excellent work. But outsourcing residential and commercial trash pickup would not necessarily put those workers out of a job.
In that event, the town would still keep at least four of its sanitation employees to perform tasks outside of residential and commercial trash pick-up. It takes about 5,000 man-hours to complete those daily tasks, Owens said, which include manual litter and vegetative debris pickups along town streets, at beach parking lots and on the beach strand.
Of all the aldermen, Lisa Weeks was the most outspoken in favor of reinstating curbside recycling because it would discourage residents — and especially renters — from throwing away recyclable material.
The town offered curbside recycling until July 2015 when its vendor, Green Coast Recycling, went out of business. Since then, residents have brought their recycling to central bins located at town hall. New Hanover County maintains the bins and transports the recyclables, which Owens said saves the town at least $40,000 annually.
But short-term renters don’t use the bins, Weeks said, adding, “You should see the amount of trash they have on checkout day.”
The county is working to extend the life of its landfill, Weeks said, to which Wrightsville Beach currently contributes 5,000 tons annually. The more the town contributes to the landfill, the more it pays, she said, so reducing its tonnage would save the town money. It would also extend the life of the landfill, she added, which “would be the right thing to do.”
“Let’s assume we could save 35 percent of our tonnage going into the landfill, that’s a win-win for everybody and I think the numbers would support that,” Weeks said.
Vukelich’s last day is Jan. 31 and Owens said he expects to fill public works director position by the end of February. After that, town staff and leaders will reconsider curbside recycling and sanitation.
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