Special Edition: Solid Waste E-News July 2021

• The Inception of Orange County’s Recycling Program by Blair Pollock
• Blair’s Notable Recycling & Waste Reduction Programs

Blair Pollock, Solid Waste Planner, and a local recycling celebrity. This special edition e-newsletter is to highlight Blair’s accomplishments over his 34 years working for the County and read his story from his hiring date to retirement date. 

The Inception of Orange County’s Recycling Program

written by Blair Pollock

After 34 years and three months it’s finally time to hang up my recycling hat. When the Town of Chapel Hill first hired me in May 1987 to initiate public recycling programs, I had no idea that it would turn out to be such a rewarding, expansive and engaging career in my adoptive home of Chapel Hill/Orange County where I’d moved for graduate school in 1976.

One of the stories I tell to students when lecturing on recycling and trash is my ‘origin story,’ or how I accidentally “invented” this recycling career. I tell it in the spirit of entrepreneurship in the public sector and how one should engage where their interests lie.  In 1984, when the Towns of Carrboro and Chapel Hill and the County government jointly moved to buy land adjoining the existing public landfill on Eubanks Road for future expansion, a local uproar forced an impromptu public meeting being declared from what was to have been a closed session of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen to discuss purchase of the ‘Greene Tract’, 184 acres adjacent to the Rogers Road neighborhood between Eubanks and Homestead Roads.  Upon seeing that meeting advertised in the local paper, I went to voice my opinion.  When my turn on the podium came I said the following (here I paraphrase myself as I don’t have a recorded version)

“If you (elected officials) are going to site a new landfill, in anticipation of filling of the current one, then you should:

1. Consider ways to reduce the use of the current and future landfills by recycling and other means.
2. Examine alternative technologies such as incineration and composting (which were then coming to maturity –by the standards of the day).
3. Conduct a more measured and technically based landfill site search rather than buy what seems expedient.

Some weeks after this rather heated public meeting, I received a phone call asking if I would like to serve on the brand new Orange County Solid Waste Task Force.  I enthusiastically said ‘yes’, little knowing what lay ahead.  After two years of meetings and listening to various experts on solid waste, our citizen task force submitted its report, the essence of which was the ten page version of my original three statements, but backed up by technical data and some more articulated recommendations.

A couple of months after our report was submitted, all assumed that it would receive the fate of many citizen reports, no matter how well-intentioned or closely reasoned -- a respected place on the shelf of the bureaucracy.  But instead I received a phone call from a friend working at Chapel Hill Public Works where he said, (here again I paraphrase because 34 plus years later it’s hard to recall exact language), “Blair, I can’t believe you’re not applying for that job”. “That job” turned out to be the opportunity to be the Town of Chapel Hill’s first recycling coordinator. 

I went ahead and applied, got the job as the only interviewee, and set up five recycling drop off sites for newspapers and aluminum cans at locations where color-separated glass was already being collected by ECOS, a small local non-profit formed in the wake of the first Earth Day, by Larry Kehrer, whom I still refer to as the local Godfather of recycling. The Town allocated part time use of an existing garbage truck to collect newspapers for which there was a robust nearby market. Aluminum cans also had a market, such a good one that others often got to the cans before collection day, despite my efforts to chain down the lids of the red, white and blue painted 55 gallon drums we used for collection.

From that humble beginning, our now wide-ranging, well-used and often referenced recycling program has been built. To describe the dynamics of program growth, I like to use the symbolism of the recycling ‘chasing arrows’ (Mobius strip) logo. Let’s arbitrarily say the first arrow is ‘public demand’ – the second is the governmental response – to fund new programs and the third, staff collecting, sorting and transporting the goods. 

Coincident with the start of local programs in summer 1987 just happened to be the launching of the ill-fated MOBRO 3000 garbage barge that left from Long Island in March 1987, in an attempt to find a cheap dumping ground and avoid paying the high cost of local incineration. Public consciousness about waste and landfills rose dramatically as a result of the barge’s journey that was tracked on the front page for weeks until it finally went back home to Islip NY. North Carolina was one of the potential burying grounds - locally putting more of a focus on recycling as a solution to the garbage ‘crisis’. Some of our early PR flyers said “don’t barge our garbage’.

After a year of just drop off, we initiated two curbside pilot recycling programs, one for only bundled newspapers at 1,000 homes and one for newspapers, aluminum cans and glass bottles using blue plastic 12 gallon bins, one per household bin – the now ubiquitous blue cart is 95 gallons. All collection was manual and materials were sorted by the drivers at the curb. Success of the pilot meant that curbside recycling was initiated for all single family homes in Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Hillsborough in 1989, along with expansion of drop off sites.  Almost simultaneously, UNC grabbed the recycling baton and ran with it, creating what is still a nationally recognized University recycling program.

Subsequent programs expansions over the next decade brought commercial recycling – initially ‘the bar glass program’, multifamily, rural areas, hazardous household waste. Each new effort met with resounding participation, leading to more diversion from the publicly owned local landfill, thus more support from the elected bodies and expansion of hard-working staff to do more of this.  In 1997 three governments of the Landfill Owners Group, along with Hillsborough, jointly adopted a County wide solid waste plan with a stated goal of reducing waste to landfill by 61% per person, the odd number was a result of UNC having already begun diverting 30,000 tons of coal ash from landfilling, so a 50% goal that included the ash diversion was too low a bar.

Orange County government took over Solid Waste, including recycling programs and the landfill, in 2000, continuing the robust and expanding effort. Our County’s aggressive waste reduction per person goal was actually achieved in 2009 after being reaffirmed every three years and thoroughly supported by residents and elected boards. Though our local landfill closed in 2013, we continue the work of reducing what must now be trucked over 90 miles to a remote landfill in Randolph County.

So I leave, proud of the accomplishments and the observation that recycling is now embedded firmly into the culture of Orange County.  Walk down Franklin Street, North Churton Street or Main Street in Carrboro – see recycling bins, use the gas pumps at over half the convenience stores throughout Orange County and see convenient can and bottle recycling. All single family homes and over 90% of apartments have County recycling. Stop at a salvage shed to pick up a treasure or drop off something for others to use.
Our programs are fully-funded and well-used.  We’re ready for the next step. So this fall when Orange County announces more formally the new solid waste planning effort to take us to a “zero waste” to landfill, we will be ready. Every two weeks I’ll continue to proudly roll out my own blue cart along with most of you.

Blair’s Notable Recycling & Waste Reduction Programs 

Blair Pollock’s highly creative mind, proactive attitude, and resourcefulness all worked together to develop and implement several successful recycling and waste reduction programs across the County.

Commercial Food Waste Collection Programs

• In 1987, Blair was hired and helped establish 5 unstaffed drop-off sites to recycle glass bottles (separated by color), aluminum cans and newspapers.
• In 1988, he helped pilot the first urban curbside programs for Chapel Hill to recycle newspaper, aluminum cans, and glass bottles from ~1,000 homes.
• By 1989, the urban curbside recycling program had started in all 3 towns (Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough). Recycling drop-off sites expanded to 19 total collection sites.
• In 1993, recycling collection was available at all 5 new staffed convenience centers and was instrumental in developing the first solid waste plan involving recycling in the following year.
• From 1997-2000, the urban, rural and commercial recycling programs expands gradually and incrementally.
• In 2006, mixed paper was added to recycling collection and the County reaches 50% waste reduction in 2007. Cardboard was also added to the recycling collection the following year.
• In 2012, the County reaches 59% waste reduction rate which is the best in NC for the 3^rd year in a row!
• By 2017, curbside recycling had been expanded County-wide.

Some say working in solid waste is a thankless job. Blair worked hard to develop recycling and waste reduction programs throughout Orange County and the best part is that it never felt like ‘work’ to him. He was inspired by recycling and the community in Orange County that made his job easier.

To Blair: From all of us at the Orange County Solid Waste Department, thank you for everything you have done for this community Blair – it will not be the same without you.