Starting January 11th, 2021, residents and businesses will be able to recycle #5 plastic tubs in Rumpke’s recycling program. So, yogurt eaters rejoice! Bring on the butter tubs and toss in those fruit cups! All of these items will find new life through Rumpke’s enhanced recycling program. Residents can now place plastic tubs, along with their lids in the recycling bin. Be sure to rinse the container and reattach the lid before tossing in the bin.
Like with other acceptable items, Rumpke has secured long-term contracts with stable, regional end users for this material, and with a grant from The Recycling Partnership, they will soon install new machinery at some of our recycling facilities to better sort the material.
Rumpke will officially launch the new program January 11, 2021. This addition to the acceptable materials list expands the types of plastics accepted, which currently includes plastic bottles and jugs only (disregard # on bottom of container and go by the mouth narrower than container rule). You can find a full list of the accepted recyclable materials here.
When the holidays are over, make sure you treecycle! The act of recycling a live Christmas tree is a leading reason many experts agree they are more environmentally friendly than their plastic counterparts.
Treecycling is the act of recycling your cut Christmas tree, so that it can be used in other capacities. The trees can get a second life after they are chipped (used for mulch and hiking trails), become fish or wildlife habitat, or are utilized for lake and river shoreline stabilization.
Locally, many communities and the Clermont County Park District are offering opportunities for you to treecycle. But before you take your tree to a collection site or haul it to the curb for pick-up, please be sure to remove all lights, tinsel, and decorations.
Among Clermont County recycling opportunities:
Looking to recycle string lights? click here
Recycle your broken or unwanted holiday lights in Clermont County at any of the locations listed below. Only holiday lights should go in the designated collection bins – please do not put bags or boxes in the bins.
Items to be recycled include indoor and outdoor light strands, icicle lights and rope lights. Please do not bring individual bulbs, pre-lit trees, wreaths or other decorations. Also please don’t put holiday lights in the curbside or drop-off recycling dumpsters. Lights have to be collected separately from other recyclables because they can tangle the equipment used to sort materials at the recycling facilities.
For questions about this program, please contact Laura Lair of the Solid Waste District at llair@clermontcountyohio.gov or visit www.CohenUSA.com/lights.
Located just outside of Clermont County, McNicholas High school is hosting a low-cost shred event on November 7th from 9am-12pm. Participants may bring up to 5 banker’s boxes (or household trash bags) of documents to shred for just $20. For comparison, the minimum cost of shredding services at a typical retailer is $1/lb. — a full banker’s box can weigh 35 lbs. or more!
Proceeds from the event benefit McNicholas High School’s athletic programs.
Good news! The annual Spring Litter Cleanup has been rescheduled for July 4th through 25th. Go to www.springlittercleanup.com for more information!
Plastic bags do not go in curbside or drop-off recycling bins! Trash bags and shopping bags cannot be recycled at the facilities we send our recyclables to. When bags go to our recycling facilities, they can tangle on the sorting equipment and cause it to break down. Remove your recyclables from bags when you put them in the bin.
Although plastic shopping bags cannot be recycled through our curbside or drop-off recycling programs, recycling your bags is still possible through special programs. Try bringing your shopping bags to a grocery or department store for recycling. Many stores have plastic bag recycling bins just inside their entryways. Make sure your bags are clean and dry before dropping them off at a store recycling program.
Example of an in-store plastic bag recycling program
When the holidays are over, make sure you treecycle your live Christmas tree.
Treecycling is the act of recycling your cut Christmas tree, so that it can be used in other capacities. The trees can get a second life after they are chipped (used for mulch and hiking trails), become fish or wildlife habitat, or are utilized for lake and river shoreline stabilization.
Many communities and the Clermont County Park District are offering opportunities for you to treecycle. But before you take your tree to a collection site or haul it to the curb for pick-up, please be sure to remove all lights, tinsel and decorations.
Among Clermont County recycling opportunities:
Pattison Park Lakeside will be closed starting September 2nd for construction. At that time, work will begin on the sidewalks to be installed along the length of the parking lot. This will entail the removal of several feet asphalt along the edge of the parking lot creating a lack of parking and a fall hazard.
Recycling dumpsters will be moved to the other side of the parking lot. Access to the recycling dumpsters will be limited depending upon where things are in the construction progress. People looking for alternative place to drop off recycling can go to the site in the fairgrounds by the main gate.
This part of the construction should last through the end of September depending upon weather and construction progress.
Thanks for your cooperation and understanding!
BATAVIA, Ohio – Clermont County-area volunteers are needed to help with the region’s portion of the 3,000-mile Ohio River Sweep litter cleanup, 9 a.m.-noon, June 15.
Local volunteers, please report to:
Wear clothes that can get dirty and closed-toe shoes. Organizers will provide trash bags and a limited number of gloves. Each volunteer will receive a free T-shirt.
The Ohio River Sweep extends the entire length of the Ohio River and many of its tributaries. This important regional event addresses a global problem: litter in our waterways. It connects people to the Ohio River and encourages stewardship of this important resource.
“Rivers and streams provide 65 percent of our nation’s drinking water and 88 percent of Cincinnati’s drinking water,” said Penny Greenler, Clermont Country River Sweep coordinator. “By participating in the River Sweep cleanup effort with others in your community, you can help make your Ohio River a safer, healthier place for wildlife and people.”
Thousands of volunteers from Pittsburgh, Pa., to Cairo, Ill., will clean up the 3,000 miles of Ohio River shoreline. The cleanup involves more than 100 locations in six states. It’s coordinated by the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission (ORSANCO) and state environmental agencies. See www.ohioriversweep.org for more information.
BATAVIA, Ohio – Paul Braasch, a champion for the environment in Clermont County and throughout Ohio, is retiring after 25 years at Clermont County, as Director of the Adams-Clermont Solid Waste District and the county’s
Office of Environmental Quality.
Braasch has had an enormous impact on Clermont County as an advocate for recycling, water quality, and environmental stewardship. His success, he says, lies in his ability to bring people to the table and work together.
Braasch, who graduated with a Bachelor of Science in agriculture from the University of Kentucky, developed expertise in recycling when he worked in the 1980s at Adams Brown Recycling in Georgetown, now the largest non-profit recycler in the State of Ohio. Later, as an employee with SCS Engineers, an environmental consulting firm, they wrote solid waste plans for 19 counties throughout Ohio as the Ohio Legislature required. “I wrote the Adams-Clermont Solid Waste Plan and then I was recruited to come to Clermont County,” he said. He began his career at the county in 1993.
Braasch’s interest in the environment stemmed naturally from his interest in agriculture, he said. He paraphrases a John Muir quote, which emphasizes the connectivity of the environment: “When one tugs at a single string in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” “It’s all connected,” Braasch said. “I’ve found it very fulfilling to be involved in making things better, and do what little I could to conserve our resources. I was brought up by a Dutch German family where conservation of every penny was demanded!”
Braasch is proud of the “unprecedented” level of research done on water quality in the East Fork watershed, under the auspices of the East Fork Watershed Cooperative. Clermont County took over the operation of a Procter & Gamble stream research facility in Miami Township, on the banks of the East Fork of the Little Miami River, and now leases it to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA conducts research of the watershed from this facility.
What was originally called the Scientific Advisory Committee has now evolved into a group involving the U.S. EPA, Ohio EPA, USGS, the Army Corps of Engineers, NOAA, several universities, as well as the Clermont County stakeholders such as the Soil & Water Conservation District. “The level of science that’s been brought to the East Fork Little Miami watershed is unprecedented in the United States,” Braasch said. “It’s a little known fact as to how much research, how much expertise has been directed to the East Fork watershed. We were way ahead of our time when we started looking at water quality on a watershed basis and now we’re probably way ahead of most of the country in understanding what drives water quality. We’re learning what we need to do to reduce nutrients and pollutants to our streams.”
Best management practices that farmers are adopting include the use of cover crops and building wetlands on farm property to soak up nutrients. Braasch is convinced that over time, these practices will become widespread and that harmful algal blooms, which have plagued Harsha Lake, as well as the Ohio River, will become less pervasive.
One underappreciated factor in the quality of water in the United States, Braasch said, is something most of us take for granted now: centralized sewer systems. “It used to be people had a pipe to the creek … or maybe a leachfield which evolved to an on-site system. It used to be that the Ohio River was the sewer system,” he said. “Having centralized sewers has been tremendous in improving water quality and our health. These guys who work for the Water Resources Department, putting in sewer pipes and maintaining them … It’s a dirty hard job and they don’t get enough appreciation.”
He’s also proud of the level of recycling that is now done throughout the county. He brought drop-off recycling to the county years ago, but now curbside recycling is gaining popularity. Just in the last year, the Solid Waste District helped Batavia, Ohio and Williamsburg townships secure curbside recycling via waste franchising to over 8,000 households. “More people are recycling because they know it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “Are we running out of space for landfills? No, it’s a big country. There’s plenty of places we could throw garbage. But it’s such a waste of our money and resources to throw it in there when we can reuse it. And it creates jobs. It doesn’t have to go into a hole in the ground to make a mound that we can’t ever use again.”
Braasch says Clermont County must continue to be vigilant in monitoring the CECOS International hazardous waste facility in Jackson Township, which stopped receiving waste in 1988 and closed in 1997. Clermont County monitors the site, along with the U.S. EPA and Ohio EPA. The hazardous waste site is upstream of Harsha Lake, which supplies some of the county’s water. Braasch was instrumental in negotiating an agreement between CECOS and the county, approved in 2012, that added groundwater monitoring wells at the site.
As he retires, Braasch looks forward, of course, to getting out more in nature – skiing, backpacking and more traveling. Several trips out West are on the itinerary, as well as some skiing in Banff, in the Canadian Rockies. He loves skiing. “When you’re skiing, you don’t think about anything else but what you’re doing. If you don’t, you’re gonna get hurt. And so you’re focused and you forget about everything else around you. It’s soothing and relaxing.”
Hannah Lubbers, who has worked with Braasch for 10 years at the Solid Waste District and OEQ, will become director of both on Feb. 1.
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