Black Mountain’s population is expected to grow significantly by 2025, and that means residents will generate a lot more trash. In 2011, the year after the county wrote its solid waste management plan, each Black Mountain resident produced a half ton of garage – some three pounds daily. If population projections for 2025 are correct and the half ton-per-person amount isn’t decreased, Black Mountain will be responsible for more lots more garbage headed for the landfill annually.
Already Black Mountain residents are working to reduce the amount they send to the landfill. BlueFire MacMahon, a clay artist living in Swannanoa, is reducing her contribution one piece at a time. Currently she is eliminating plastic from her life (and her garbage). That means she is no longer using plastic Baggies or produce bags. It’s not just about garbage reduction, however. “I do not want my food or the food of my pets absorbing chemicals when it comes in contact with plastic,” she said.
MacMahon, whose art can be seen in the Seven Sisters Gallery in Black Mountain, started composting recently and has found bears and raccoons to be a problem. “I need to upgrade my system,” she said. Her next focus is to reduce the number of cat food cans she uses (even though she recycles them).
MacMahon’s new interest in garbage reduction is part of her commitment to live more simply and health consciously. She’s eating right and exercising (and feeling better, she said). “My environment is an extension of my physical body,” she said. “Taking care of the physical environment is just like taking care of my physical body. I now even think more clearly. These changes are profoundly affecting my quality of life.”
Black Mountain makes recycling easy. It has 25 recycling containers around town and downtown, at parks, the Carver Center, the Lakeview Center, and Grey Eagle Arena, town clerk Angela Reece said. “In addition, almost every employee has recycling receptacles at their desks,” she said. New residents who apply for water service receive a brochure about recycling in town.
Belinda Boxer of Black Mountain has always cared about reducing the amount of her garbage. “I grew up in England, and we just don’t have the space to dispose of lots of garbage,” she said Boxer’s father was recycling in the 1970s “before it was cool,” she said. “I’ve lived here for 14 years now, and I’m so interested in minimizing garbage, I embarrass my kids,” she said. “I pick out the recyclables in the trash at their soccer games. I drive home with recyclables from high school football games to make sure they get disposed of properly.”
Boxer, who manages the 10,000 Villages store in Montreat, said she has made it her quest to reduce the garbage output of the store as well. She insists all cardboard boxes and brown paper be sent to Mountain Nest Gallery in downtown Black Mountain to be used for shipping art purchases. Styrofoam is stored until Asheville Greenworks has one of its “hard to recycle” events. Electrical waste, like batteries, are likewise stored until it can be taken to the hard to recycle event (she pays $1 per bag to donate those, since they must be driven to Hickory for disposal, but feels it’s worth the price to keep toxic chemicals out of the landfill).
“Light bulbs are still hard,” Boxer said. “I haven’t found a way to keep those out of the landfill yet. However, when our store got all new computer equipment, I kept the old equipment until I eventually found homes for each piece. Charlotte Street Computers in Asheville was helpful with that effort.
To read the full story, visit http://www.blackmountainnews.com/story/news/2017/02/15/facing-mountains-trash-residents-recycle/97442060/.