NELSONVILLE, Ohio — Recycling is a seemingly simple task that isn’t that simple after all.
“There’s a lot of confusion about what’s recyclable and what’s not out there,” said Jane Forrest Redfern, the director of the Athens-Hocking Solid Waste District. “People don’t know where their recycling goes.”
With the many regulations and restrictions that vary by county and state, some people just don’t take the time to properly recycle, but Jane Forrest Redfern is working to make it almost impossible for you not to recycle.
“That's my job is to get as many people to reduce, reuse, and recycle as possible,” Forrest Redfern said.
She and her team are making it easier for residents to do so through a first-of-its-kind “Recycling Trail." It’s essentially a guide with more than 200 places in Athens and Hocking counties where people can reduce, reuse and recycle.
“We felt that this would be an appropriate way to communicate to not only residents here, but also the five million visitors that come down here,” Forrest Redfern said. “We want them to recycle. And we want them to buy materials that are secondhand and made here and or recycled here.”
With funding from the Ohio EPA, physical maps and an online website include all kinds of information from where to thrift clothing and furniture to where to recycle household hazardous waste or scrap metal to where to repair items so you don’t have to buy new. Places like antique shops, appliance repair shops, musical instrument repair shops, composting facilities, household recycling drop-off locations, plastic bag drop-off locations and so much more.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony on National Recycling Day celebrated the launch and highlighted people in the community who go out of their way to make the world a cleaner place.
“I hate to see trash laying around,” said Marian Gall, a resident of Hocking County and an Athens-Hocking Solid Waste District 2023 Recycling Hero. “I hate to see stuff that gets thrown away and could be reused. And so anything we can reuse let's try to do that.”
Gall has been leading by example since the ’80s and even created a recycling jingle to help her community have fun with it.
“Because I care about Mother Earth,” Gall said.
Alicia Caton, an AmeriCorps alumni who helped with the project said change begins with education. She said household recyclables are basically anything that you can buy at the supermarket.
“So detergent bottles, milk jugs, plastic bottles, cans of, you know, canned fruit, or soup cans. Any cardboard, we want to make sure it's flattened,” Caton said. “Paper, plastic, magazines, newspapers, glass, of course, plastic, except for, you know, plastic film.”
She hopes the trail helps people not just recycle, but recycle right. This includes taking the time to rinse your recyclables before throwing them into a bin and making sure you put them loosely into a recycling container and not in a trash bag or plastic bag.
“The idea [is] to encourage people to actually participate in this and to have fun,” Caton said. “Instead of shopping online on Amazon, you can actually go into a store and have that experience, which is much more personal and it connects you more to your region.”
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is a concept made simpler through the work of some thoughtful individuals who care about the Earth and other people.
“I'm gonna be a grandmother at Christmas time so this is for them,” Forrest Redfern said. “My whole life I've worked on protecting the environment, but now that I have a grandchild, you know, we have an Earth to protect for future generations.”
Forrest Redfern said she would love to see this concept adopted by other counties and states so more people have the education and resources to recycle properly. You can find the physical maps at many of the libraries in Athens and Hocking Counties and for a detailed look at the map online you can visit here.