Augusta officials want more people to recycle.

If more people were to recycle properly, there would be less trash going to the Augusta landfill, and the city would make money from the recycled goods.

Augusta Commissioner Sammie Sias made recycling the topic of his community breakfast discussion on Saturday morning.

Sias is spreading the word about how to make Augusta cleaner and smarter. The city says around 15,000 homeowners are recycling, but city officials want more people to recycle.

Augusta Commissioner Sammie Sias showed homeowners the dozens of items that can be recycled. He sees the multiple benefits of going green and wants the rest of the city to join.

“Recycling is good for the environment and on our recycling program, hopefully, the city can make a couple of dollars on it, at least help pay for the cost of operations as we pick up the other trash,” said Sias.

It’s not only the city that will gain revenue from recycling, but each person can save a little cash too.

By ordering this free recycling container from the city, each homeowner can save almost $100 by using the smaller container instead of putting my waste in the larger container.

The cost of the large trash cart is $310.50 per year while the smaller cart is $232.88 per year. The city offers a free recycling cart with every garbage service, and if you need an extra recycling cart it’s also cheaper than the cost of a second trash cart.

“When the consumer puts recycling in their cart, we send it to a processor who pays us five dollars a ton for that material, when it goes in the trash, we actually have the cost of running the land fill, so by recycling it’s an economic benefit back to the city,” said Mark Johnson, Director of Environmental Services with the City of Augusta.

Johnson said since the transition of trash pick-up from two days a week to one day, the number of households recycling doubled.

But the city wants to see thousands more come aboard.

“We are going to ask the environmental services to start a pilot program in one of the immediate neighborhoods here that will have every resident with a recycling can,” said Sias.

Sias said the pilot program is planned to start in the Sand Ridge subdivision, which has about 500 homes.

With more people starting the initiative, the next step is for environmental services to educate the community on how to properly recycle. 

“We’ve seen in increase in contamination and now we are focused on trying to minimize that contamination, we need to get the food waste out and other contaminants and that should bring the revenue opportunities back to us,” said Johnson.

In addition to saving money, you can get free discounts and freebies every time you recycle by adding up points through the Recycling Perks Program.

Click here for more on the Recycling Perks Program and how to order a recycling cart: http://www.augustasolidwaste.com/services/residential-services/recycling/recycling-perks/