Athens Economic Woes Visible at the Curb

If you’re looking for a silver lining to the economic downturn in Athens, Jim Corley says, look no further than your own garbage can.

Athenians and their counterparts across the country are tossing less trash and increasing recycling, and that means is being saved.

The Wasteful American is mending his ways, at least for now.

“We were at 85,000 tons per year and have dropped down to about 62,000 tons now,” said Corley, director of the . “Nationally, that’s the trend, too.”

D'town recycling (tons)

Note: The city data is for ACC Landfill tonnage only. The county-wide trash data is not available due to multiple private haulers.

Regarding trash tonnage, “that dropoff after 2008 looks like the recession, pretty clearly,” said Bill Sheehan, Athens-based executive director of the Product Policy Institute. That's a non-profit organization with an emphasis on consumption and waste management issues.

By the ton, landfill use is down some 25 percent here since 2008. Recycling collections are up in all areas of the county and have tripled in downtown Athens. At night, it becomes a thriving dining and entertainment district and a famous discarder of bottles, cans and other byproducts.  Part of the recycling education there involved county workers standing by while the late-night trash was being tossed, and reminding barhands and restaurateurs to separate trash from recyclables.

“It’s sort of a constant education program,” due to the flux of bars, said Corley. “A lot of bottle and cans down there. We just started pushing (recycling) harder.”

Athens-Clarke County has added about three years of life to the landfill since the mid-1990s through its recycling efforts, he said.

While trash production is down countywide, it has not dipped in the central business district, according to Corley. The waste revenues used to operate the solid waste office are holding their own.

The Athens-Clarke landfill is about 400 acres. Forty acres in Oglethorpe County also serve as an inert landfill site for construction and demolition waste from Athens, under a long-standing agreement between the two counties.