Donna Barrett urges Smyrna to 'check the triangle' and expand recycling education
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Summary
Donna Barrett of Recycle Right Tennessee told the Smyrna council a regional pilot and a new website aim to help residents meet statutory recycling diversion goals by simplifying what and where to recycle, and warned that loose batteries are a leading cause of collection-truck fires.
Donna Barrett, chair of a regional recycling board and a former state representative, told the Smyrna town council workshop that a public-education push and a new online database aim to help Rutherford County residents meet state diversion goals.
Barrett said the state has set a statutory target to divert 25% of waste from landfills and that federal guidance through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could push that to 50% by 2030. To help reach those targets, she said her board launched a pilot program six months ago covering Rutherford, Coffee, Cannon and Warren counties and is emphasizing education as the first step.
"Where do I recycle and what can I recycle?" Barrett asked the council, summarizing the two questions the program is designed to answer. She urged residents to "check the triangle" on packaging to identify recyclable materials and said commonly accepted plastics are mostly plastics labeled 1 and 2. She advised focusing initially on the five easiest-to-identify materials — plastics, paper, cardboard, metal and glass — which her team calls the program’s "top five."
Barrett described recyclerighttn.com, a searchable county-by-county database the group maintains that lists commonly recycled items, drop-off locations, hours and which partners accept particular materials. She said Rutherford County operates 14 convenience/recycling centers, and that the Smyrna and La Verne centers each handle roughly 5,900–6,000 visitors per week. The database, she said, is checked quarterly to keep listings current.
Barrett also addressed common questions from the council and residents: modern paper mills increasingly accept greasy pizza boxes if they are essentially empty, she said, and Rutherford County convenience centers accept single-stream recyclables for core items while glass is handled in a separate bin. On Styrofoam, Barrett said compressed packing foam can be dropped off at specific locations (she cited La Verne), grocery stores collect certain foam items for corporate recycling programs and private processors contract to recycle some foam products.
She warned that batteries are a serious safety risk: "it is the leading cause of fires in our collection trucks, in our landfills, in the bins," and urged residents to keep batteries out of regular trash and collection bags.
Barrett told the council her board is working with 172 private-sector partners across the four-county region and that private brokers and end users (from paper mills to tile manufacturers) are an essential part of the markets for recovered materials. She asked the council and residents to share information about local businesses that accept materials so they can be listed on the site.
The mayor and council thanked Barrett for the presentation and for leaving printed palm cards with program information for residents.
