Resort recycling: encouraging tourists to help

North Myrtle Beach is a year-round resort located on South Carolina’s Grand Strand. While the city has 8,862 year-round residents, the population swells by 50,000 during the spring and fall golfing seasons and by more than 100,000 during the summer vacation months.

Thus, the solid waste collection system and recycling program must meet the needs of the area’s unique population.

In 1992, South Carolina enacted a Solid Waste Management and Reduction Act, which established a statewide goal of a 20 percent reduction in municipal solid waste entering landfills by 1997.

North Myrtle Beach began recycling efforts at that time, and now it recaptures 22 percent of its 19,000 annual tons of refuse. The city expected a total cost of $167,663 in 1995 for landfilling, but if current trends continue, the cost should only reach $163,000.

Single-family residents generate 35 percent of the solid waste in the city, so the first program North Myrtle Beach established was a front-yard collection system for commingled recyclables. The city provided all its single-family customers with 27-gallon recycling containers, and residents were asked to place their recyclables at the curb once a week.

A continuing, extensive educational program has helped produce a set-out rate of 30 percent (established at 60 percent during summer) for the 5,500 single-family homes in the community, half of which are occupied on a year-round basis.

The city then addressed the multifamily recycling issue. North Myrtle Beach has more than 7,500 multifamily units, and these tourist apartments and condos typically occupied by tenants staying only one week or less contribute 30 percent of the waste collected by the city.

The challenge was again evident: create easily recognizable, convenient and continuously publicized programs that are attractive to short-term renters.

The city worked with each complex to design a site-specific program to match the available space with a compatibly sized receptacle. Location is selected with an eye toward visibility and convenience.

The city, with 32 multi-family projects and a total of 1,850 units involved in recycling, provides educational brochures for posting in elevators, lobbies and other high-traffic areas. On average, the city collects five tons of recyclables from these units monthly.

The tourism industry, another target area, supports 170 restaurants containing a total of 18,000 seats. This group contributes significantly to the remaining 35 percent of solid waste.

In restaurant recycling, bins are provided to collect recyclables from the kitchen area, which are then transferred and sorted into 90-gallon carts by restaurant staff.

A second recycling program for the business community involves cardboard. Businesses break up their boxes and deposit them in receptacles. Cardboard collections have grown to 16 tons monthly. A Department of Health and Environmental Control recycling grant of $54,000 is used in the development of the program and publication of recycling literature.

To date, North Myrtle Beach provides all recycling services at no charge to the participating businesses, a powerful incentive, because every ounce of materials diverted from the landfill waste stream can save a business part of its garbage collection fees.

It is the uniqueness of the North Myrtle Beach market area, the individually tailored successful response to recycling needs in a resort environment and the current projections of achieving the statewide 25 percent recycling objective that make the city’s solid waste program a success.

North Myrtle Beach relies on community support and awareness to achieve its success.