As Aiken prepares for Earth Day's events Saturday, many residents are reflecting back 25 years ago when Aiken operated the only citywide recycling program in South Carolina.
Aiken residents Stephen Hale and Tim Coakley were asked by the City Environmental Committee to write a piece on Aiken's recycling history.
According to the piece, efforts began in 1990 when elementary school students wrote their City Council members, asking that the city become involved in recycling and support environmental protection and conservation of landfill space.
City Manager Roland Windham presented a recycling program to the South Carolina Municipal Association in Columbia as the city's entry in the annual statewide competition for the Municipal Cup - an award that recognizes superior and innovative efforts by the staffs of municipal governments.
In the application for the award, Windham wrote that Aiken's effort was proving itself with about 80 percent participation. By spring, Aiken's recycling program was reducing the volume transported to the landfill by about 20 percent.
"Because some of what is picked up in the recycling can be sold, the cost of putting a new recycling crew on the road was $47,000 less than the cost of a new garbage crew," Windham added.
In 1990, Kenny Cook was the superintendent of public works, a position that had him working for Public Works Director Roger LeDuc. That team, which also included future City Personnel Director Stanley Quarles, envisioned and operated the recycling program at the start.
Cook, now the Williston city manager, remembers public works driver Beverly Forrest taking the helm of that first hybrid recycling vehicle. The driver and the whole team laid out a test route.
"We continued to organize the route as Beverly drove it among the volunteer households in the original pilot project because we kept figuring more efficient routes but also because new households kept signing up," Cook recalled.
LeDuc added, "Other than a few locations in Florida, no other states had a recycling program in the entire Southeast. Those were exciting times."
Aiken's 2015 voluntary recycling efforts include: Public Services hauling 2,000 tons of recycling to North Augusta last fiscal year; about 60 percent of Aiken households participating in weekly recycling; the city picking up 150 gallons of paint saved for reuse in 2014; recycling 1,865 pounds of e-scrap (printers, phones, wires, computers, etc.), 8 tons of metal and 500 gallons of oil.
Derrek Asberry is the SRS beat reporter for the Aiken Standard and has been with the paper since June 2013. He is originally from Vidalia, Ga., and a graduate of Georgia Southern University. Follow him on Twitter @DerrekAsberry.