Goose Creek Recycling? Mayor Gives Emphatic No

A new resident of Goose Creek, 9-year-old Reilly Williams wanted to see the community embrace the kind of recycling program she’d grown up with in upstate New York. Berkeley County has recycling convenience centers, but the City of Goose Creek does not provide curbside pickup.

Goose Creek Mayor Michael Heitzler says a city recycling program isn’t coming anytime soon, as there are a host of other programs the city would rather pay for first.

Reilly read a letter that she wrote to the mayor aloud at the City Council meeting earlier this month:

Dear Mr. Mayor,

In answering your letter as to how to start a recycling program, when we started recycling in New York we realized that at least half of are garbage could be recycled.

Maybe to help the city with the cost of starting recycling the people who want to recycle can buy the recycling bins. Like the leaf and lawn bins. Also you could pick up the recycling bins every other week.

Not only would you be saving money because you would [there would be] less garbage to pick up and get rid of, but you would be helping the earth and South Carolina. My aunt lives in Myrtle Beach and they recycle there. Maybe you could call there mayor and ask him how they started to recycle.

I’m sure you have provided an amazing amount of wonderful things for the City of Goose Creek. This would be something that you would be known for. I read in an article in the Goose Creek [Gazette] that you said "Those of us that are in office should anticipate the needs of the community and try our best to meet those needs before they become apparent."

Don't wait until it’s too late, the community needs it now. Be the leader for Goose Creek in recycling. Recycling is important to me because while it’s helping the earth, it is helping the people of Goose Creek also!

Sincerely yours,
Reilly Williams

The mayor congratulated Reilly on a well-formed argument and then said the council was not interested. "I think that one day we will have a recycling program in the city," Heitzler said before dashing any hopes of that happening anytime soon. "It is very, very expensive."

Any extra dollars in the budget will go towards other priorities, Heitzler said. "City Council could probably list five or six or 10 or 12 things that they would rather spend tax money on today than recycling, Such as hiring police officers or firefighters — we need to build three firehouses," the mayor said. "I could go on and on."

Reilly's mother, Sheri Williams, said that her daughter and her classmates learned from an early age that many of the items sent to the dump are recyclable. "They know these things, so it's disturbing what we’re doing to the earth," Sheri Williams said.

The mayor also gave an impassioned defense for the county's current solid waste plan — disposing of trash in large holes that are filled over time and then covered with dirt. "Trees are planted and a forest emerges there on this high ground," Heitzler said. The sites are then used to harvest methane gas that can generate electricity for facilities like Google's nearby data center.

"It's extremely efficient," he said, arguing that the transport alone can negate the benefit of recycling. Heitzler said the county program is "the quickest and most natural and most beneficial to the environment. It just hasn't made it to the textbooks yet."

The mayor challenged Reilly to come back with a counterargument and Sheri Williams tells Patch that her daughter plans to continue the fight.