Terry Timme, founder of Silver City’s Recycling Advisory Committee and an employee in the town’s Office of Sustainability, is saying goodbye to recycling life — at least professionally — after 12 years of service.
Since arriving in Silver City in 2005, Timme has established a second career for himself as a recycling leader, earning him the E. Gifford Stack Lifetime Achievement Award from the New Mexico Recycling Coalition earlier this month.
On June 7, Timme was one of four people recognized at the NMRC’s annual meeting during recycling training at the Albuquerque Museum. He was presented with a certificate and a piece of recycled art made from found scrap metal and glass by Albuquerque artist Mitch Berg.
Timme is a Ph.D. microbiologist by training and was an assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine, when a world event led him to become passionate about recycling.
“After 9/11, I felt like I was not doing enough for my community because I was working so much,” he said. “Then I thought, what do I really enjoy outside of work and that was recycling.”
In his home community of Bellaire, Texas, he joined their recycling committee and wrote a couple of grants, starting an electronics recycling program there.
In 2005, he retired after 23 years at Baylor and moved to Silver City. That year, Southwest Solid Waste announced that they were going to discontinue glass and plastic recycling because the markets for them were difficult to find. That led to a petition signed by 1,000 residents, who all said they wanted recycling to continue, even if they had to pay more for it. That prompted Southwest Solid Waste to bring back recycling and Timme’s passion for recycling was spurred on.
As a volunteer, Timme continued to work on recycling issues. He wrote a grant for children to paint murals on the giant recycling bins at the recycling center and around town, helped revitalize the Earth Day committee, and brought recycling to the annual Earth Day celebration, including establishing an annual electronic recycling component that has led to the recycling of more than 10 tons of e-waste and the safe disposal of three tons of shredded documents for community members.
In 2010, Timme accepted a position as the administrative assistant for the town of Silver City’s newly created Office of Sustainability. There, he worked on the Energy Sense program, distributing energy-saving CFL bulbs and weatherization materials and tips to residents of 800 homes to help make them more energy-efficient and help them save money. “Then the office evolved into other areas and I expanded my role to include recycling,” he said.
In 2011, the state recycling coalition offered grant money to help improve recycling and Timme wrote a $200,000 grant to buy a baler for Southwest Solid Waste, which helped them compact the recycled material and make fewer trips to Tucson, improving efficiencies in recycling for the town. Timme also helped Southwest Solid Waste find better markets for the recycled materials. These improvements helped Silver City and Southwest Solid Waste move from seeing recycling as a cost, to a source of revenue.
To read the full story, visit http://scdailypress.com/site/2017/06/30/35694/.