Ceasing operations: Marietta Area Recycling Center to close

Alisa Steely, who lives in the Veto Lake area, drops off cans at the Marietta Area Recycling Center Thursday. She said she sorts material in her garage before bringing it to the center. “We’re not very happy about it closing,” she said. (Photo by Art Smith)

Volunteers at the Marietta Area Recycling Center decided this month the nearly 50-year-old venture will soon cease operations.

“Our final day for intake is April 30,” said volunteer coordinator Kathy Ortt, whose mother Marilyn was one of the founders of the center in 1976.

The move is driven by the need for a new location and new volunteers to ensure it could continue there.

“We had problems trying to find a site that met our specs, and the cost to build it out was going to be significant, $30,000 to $40,000,” Ortt said. “The main problem was just the volunteers, in terms of having enough volunteer support to make sure we were going to be able to carry on at the next site.”

The need for a new location was prompted by property owner Ohio Valley Spray Foam needing to expand at the current site, 915 Gilman Ave. Ortt has said the company was good to work with and it was strictly a business decision on their part.

Cans of materials are lined up at the Marietta Area Recycling Center Thursday. The center is set to close, with its last day of intake on April 30. (Photo by Art Smith)

After announcing in February that they were looking for a new base of operations and volunteers, they did have some people step up, she said.

“It just wasn’t enough.”

Past and future

“It’s very sad,” Ally Drayer said Thursday as she brought a load of cardboard to the center Thursday from her employer, Green Meadow Veterinary Hospital in Marietta. “I hate to throw all this stuff in a Dumpster.”

The center was started in 1976 in conjunction with the City of Marietta at the harbor.

Ally Drayer places cardboard from her employer, Green meadow Veterinary Hospital, in a trailer at the Marietta Area Recycling Center Thursday. (Photo by Art Smith)

“Everything would be stored and then loaded that day (when) the trucks came,” Ortt recalled. “So you would smash every steel can and smash every aluminum can to make sure you had as much you could on the truck.”

Local Boy Scouts helped load up, and there were more local markets for the material so they didn’t have to take it as far, she said.

When the city added curbside recycling, the center partnered with Washington County. In 2010, the county stopped funding the center and opted for recycling trailers provided by the Southeastern Ohio Joint Solid Waste Management District.

After April 30, the district will be the primary option available to a lot of the people who brought their recyclables to the center, Ortt said.

“There are now options out there for everybody,” she said. “It’s just making sure people connect, and we just want to encourage people to keep recycling and making the effort; it’s worth it.”

Generations of volunteers

Ortt said she’s had her fair share of helping out at the center since childhood. She “really took the helm” after her mother passed away in 2014.

“On the one hand, it’s a special place, it holds a special place in my heart,” Ortt said. “I’m serious when I say it’s probably the last place like it in the country. We were somewhat of a dinosaur.

“When you fight so long to make sure something keeps going, then … to turn off that fight switch is a little hard to do,” she said.

Ellen Bond was volunteering at the center Thursday afternoon as her father Brad did for more than 35 years.

“He was one of the originals,” she said. “He sat on a bucket and packed pasteboards up until a few days before he passed.”

Ortt thanked the volunteers and community members who have supported the center over the years. She asked for help with one more goal before the end of April, a final drive to get as much office paper, newspaper, mail and any other kind of paper into the trailer that’s about halfway full right now.

“We’d like to be able to cover the cost of the haul before we close,” she said.

Ortt said she plans to keep the center’s Facebook page going and wants the volunteers to remain active in some fashion even after the physical location closes and “still contribute to making sure things get diverted from landfills and get reused or recycled.”

“Our goal is to potentially sponsor some events and do some things still,” she said.

That includes continuing to support Marietta’s Earth Day event, slated this year for Saturday, April 19.

Other recycling options

¯ City of Marietta curbside recycling, Rumpke – 1-800-828-8171

¯ Muskingum Township, Oak Grove/Devola drop-off sites, Kible – 1-800-201-0005

¯ Southeast Ohio Joint Solid Waste District trailers in rural parts of the county – wasteabate.org for the schedule, 1-800-860-8103

¯ City of Parkersburg drop-off site, 100 24th St., Parkersburg

¯ Kroger/Giant Eagle – plastic bags

Source: Marietta Area Recycling Center

Staff reporter Art Smith contributed to this story.