ANDREA HOPKINS: Others Recycle At Curbside; Bristol Should Find Way To Do It, Too

Bristol Tennessee leaders are on the cusp of approving the city budget for the coming year, but again it won’t include any money for curbside recycling.

Congratulations. Bristol has sealed its reputation as the least progressive of the Tri-Cities.

Johnson City manages to pick up its residents’ used PET bottles, aluminum cans and newspapers at curbside. Heck, Kingsport even provides the service at no additional charge – or so one of my friends who lives there tells me.

MEANWHILE, THOSE of us who live in Bristol are forced to accumulate our recyclables in the basement or garage and then haul them to one of the not-quite nearby collection sites. The hassle makes it harder to do the right thing.

But city leaders, for the most part, seem strangely unconcerned. Only Councilwoman Margaret Feierabend, the greenest of the bunch, ever puts in a good word for curbside recycling.

A lone voice crying in the wilderness isn’t enough to prompt a reconsideration of the program that the city abandoned a decade ago. It’s going to take a chorus of voices, shouting (politely, of course) in the direction of City Manager Jeff Broughton.

BROUGHTON AND company heard the pro-curbside recycling pitch last year from a group of fresh-faced, eager do-gooders – Vance Middle School seventh graders. Led by teacher Tracy Easterling, the students ran the numbers and found the city could afford curbside recycling without a tax increase.

"The plan we showed council required pick up only once every two weeks, and it also showed how jobs could be created," Easterling told my colleague, Gary Gray, as he prepared a series of articles about recycling earlier this year.

The kids’ pitch fell on deaf ears at city hall.

TRADITIONALLY, WHEN the curbside subject is broached, city leaders react in one of two manners. They decry the cost or claim that residents aren’t interested in the service. Unless they’ve surveyed every household in Bristol, how can they gauge the level of interest? Not every city resident who would participate in curbside recycling if given the opportunity is going to ring up the city manager and give him that message – particularly with no program in the offing.

As for the cost, Kingsport and Johnson City manage to break even on their curbside recycling programs. In both cities, more than 60 percent of residents participate.

This isn’t just a feel-good measure. Recycling pays dividends for the Earth and the economy.

CRUDE OIL prices reached a record-high $126 a barrel on Friday. Crude is the raw ingredient of plastic. Further, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that making a ton of plastic out of recycled drink bottles (of the PET variety) saves 55.9 gigajoules of energy.

Then there’s this interesting tidbit from the American Chemistry Council: The domestic capacity to reclaim two kinds of plastic, PET and HDPE, exceeds recycled quantities. The council offers this as proof of the need to "reinvigorate community collection programs."

The case for recycling other materials is equally strong. For instance, when you recycle a used aluminum can, it’s back on the shelf in the form of a new can in about 60 days, according to Recycling-Revolution.com. Recycling a single can saves the energy equivalent of half a gallon of gasoline.

KEEPING NEWSPAPERS out of the trash can also brings environmental benefits. Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees, according to Recycling-Revolution.com.

There’s another distinct benefit for the city. Recycled newspapers, aluminum cans and plastic bottles aren’t destined for the landfill. Since Bristol Tennessee doesn’t have its own landfill, it must pay someone else to take its trash. Reducing the volume of that trash makes a certain amount of fiscal sense.

So how about it Bristol? With the rising costs of oil and electricity and the increasing awareness of the finite nature of our resources, this seems to be an opportune time to relaunch a curbside recycling program.

The city could even enlist the Vance students to sell the program to city residents reluctant to do their part. As every parent knows, it’s hard to say no to a child.

Andrea Hopkins is opinion editor of the Bristol Herald Courier. She may be reached at or (276) 645-2534.