{"id":4162,"date":"2019-09-10T06:01:45","date_gmt":"2019-09-10T10:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=4162"},"modified":"2019-09-10T06:12:36","modified_gmt":"2019-09-10T10:12:36","slug":"margaret-gordon-on-the-crisis-of-recycling-in-morgan-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=4162","title":{"rendered":"Margaret Gordon on the Crisis of Recycling in Morgan County"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recycling is in crisis in Morgan County and across the country.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Earlier this year, the Charles R. Biggs Recycling Center in Morgan County decided that it could no longer take glass \u2013 forcing many local residents to take their glass to the recycling center in neighboring Berkeley County or to just trash it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_Zq9Upi5Fy0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cRecycling right now is going through a crisis all across the country,\u201d Margaret Gordon of the Morgan County Solid Waste Authority told Russell Mokhiber of This Week in Morgan County. \u201cThe first product that got hit was glass. But there are a lot of changes that are coming locally.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cChina decided they were not going to take our garbage anymore,\u201d Gordon said. \u201cMany recycled products were contaminated, were not clean, particularly plastic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But Berkeley County still takes glass and Morgan County does not. Why is that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cBerkeley County has a bigger tax base and more money to be able to process products that we don\u2019t have,\u201d Gordon said. \u201cIn Morgan County, we do not break even at the recycling center. But you can\u2019t look at recycling based on profit. You have to look at it based on value to the world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Southern Scrap used to come and haul the glass, plastic and paper away from the recycling center. But no longer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe owner of Southern Scrap came to our April board meeting and told us that Southern Scrap is going out of business as of the end of December 2019 and they would stop taking glass as of July 15, 2019,\u201d Gordon said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why can Berkeley County take glass and Morgan County not?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cMy understanding is they take it to a different place and they have the money to pay to higher costs,\u201d Gordon said. \u201cWe all feel terrible about not taking glass. At this point, the focus has got to be keeping recycling going totally as opposed to stopping.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gordon says that the recycling center is still taking plastics \u2013 number 1 and number 2 \u2013\u00a0 paper and aluminum cans and metal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;We break even on plastic,\u201d Gordon said. \u201cWe make a couple of thousands of dollars a year on paper and cardboard. Aluminum cans and metal \u2013 we make three to four thousand dollars a year on that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Morgan County Solid Waste Authority meets the second Tuesday of every month at 4 pm at the Episcopal Church. \u201cWe would love people to come and get involved,\u201d Gordon said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=375\">Gordon\u2019s father Charles R. Biggs<\/a> started the recycling center in Morgan County.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI\u2019m so proud of him. My mom and dad moved here in 1992. Within a couple of years, my dad got the authority going and started getting recycling going in the county. He would pull a truck behind his truck, take it to Widmyer parking lot, Great Cacapon and Paw Paw on Saturday each month and encourage people to bring recyclables and then he would take it to Martinsburg.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cDaddy was a civil engineer and recycling and environmental issues were his passion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recycling is in crisis in Morgan County and across the country. Earlier this year, the Charles R. Biggs Recycling Center in Morgan County decided that it could no longer take glass \u2013 forcing many local residents to take their glass &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=4162\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4162"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4166,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4162\/revisions\/4166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}