TWTC: Grassroots Recycling in Atlanta

Rhonda and I have gotten to talking, and it turns out that despite living on opposite sides of the country, our neighborhoods have a lot in common. She lives in the Bayview area of San Francisco, CA and I’m living in Edgewood, just east of downtown in Atlanta, GA.

We thought it would make for a cool project to talk about the ups and downs of trying to live sustainably in our different cities.

We wanted to talk a little this week about a couple of grassroots movements in our respective areas. One thing we definitely share is that we both live in “transitioning” neighborhoods. That unfortunately means that sometimes our neighborhoods get the short end of the stick when it comes to funding, since our tax base is lower. Rhonda is experiencing that first hand with the proposed redevelopment in her area that would pave over a large portion of Bayview Park, and she’s going to talk about how folks in her community are standing up to protect their neighborhood in that respect.

Over in East Atlanta, not far from Edgewood, some citizens saw a need for more commercial recycling in the East Atlanta Village, an area of shops and bars. Rather than wait for the city to fill that need, they got to work!

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Last week, I wrote about Atlanta’s new incentive-based recycling program and, as commenter Rachael pointed out, it’s got some pitfalls. She pointed me to a local group that’s putting together a recycling program aimed at the East Atlanta Village’s many bars and restaurants.

Launched by a group of local East Atlanta artists, Recycle.EAV is working to get these businesses access to recycling and maintain that access .

To kick off their project, they threw a fundraiser in September called CarnEvil. From there, they got to work researching recycling companies that could make this work and finally came across Conex Recycling. Through a partnership with Conex along with more fundraising efforts, they’re really making it happen!

Recycle.EAV worked out a start up program with Conex for 8 recycling bins with weekly pickup service for $100 a month, paid for by their fundraising efforts. Unfortunately, on the day of their September 26th event it poured rain, and they weren’t able to raise the $1200 they needed to sustain the program for a full year.

They’ve kept at the fundraising, though, hitting up a number of local events, and they have raised enough for 5 months of the program with Conex. If you want to mark your calendars to check them out in person, their trash monsters just got invited to perform at the Art Papers Art Auction in early February!

The program’s mascot is the Trash Troll, who’s made appearances at all of the local events where they’ve been fundraising. In fact, I caught a glimpse of the Troll at the Cabbagetown Chomp and Stomp and it inspired me to get thinking about ways to divert material from the waste stream and into craft projects! At the time, I had no idea what the Trash Troll was about, so you can imagine my delight when I discovered that he represented such a great cause. Program organizer Katherine Crosby told me a bit about his humble roots:

Yeah, the Trash Troll is a monster I made for my final portfolio for my BFA in photography at Georgia State. His arms and legs and head are entirely crocheted. I have to re-staple trash on him everytime he goes out. He is hard to miss.

They initially wanted to have two areas with bins in the Village and were working with the Earl, an area bar on one of those. The Earl decided to work independently with Conex, however, which is fantastic! They’re probably the busiest bar in the Village, and their recycling efforts are going to have a big impact.

The group still has two recycling areas: one behind Earthshaking Music and several bins behind 529. They went up on December 2nd. John Mlade, an East Atlanta resident, donated recycling bins for the inside of participating bars to make recycling even easier.

The group is hoping to get more bars involved as the program goes on. If you want to get involved or donate to support Recycle.EAV, keep an eye on their Facebook page for a Paypal donation link. If you want to donate via check, you can send to:

Recycle EAV
687 Brownwood Ave.
Atlanta, GA 30316

Image Credits:
Remixed image using Creative Commons photos from: m.john16 and paytonc
All other photos via Recycle.EAV. Used with permission.

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