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Jun 30, 2023

Solid waste director says landfill will stay open after it almost closed

Pickens County Solid Waste got the shredder in 2021 Pickens County Solid Waste

Pickens County Solid Waste got the shredder in 2021

Pickens County Solid Waste got the shredder in 2021

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Pickens County Solid Waste got the shredder in 2021

At the landfill in Pickens County, it is all hands on deck during the holiday season.

"During Christmastime, everybody is getting new things so we get inundated with all the old stuff and we have a busy time," said Steve Raines, director of solid waste for Pickens County. "It will take us until the end of January to overcome the holidays."

To help, Pickens County Solid Waste has a shredder machine that was busy at work on Wednesday.

"The shredder takes all this big material, bulky material, we run it in ... it's a low-speed, high-tort shredder, it grinds the stuff up with little to no dust, it's great for our air quality and it makes it into a mulch-like material and this mulch-like material, we can put it in our landfill and compact it very well," said Raines.

According to Raines, they got the shredder last year after the landfill almost closed because it was over capacity.

"We had to come up with some ideas to try and change things," said Raines. "Initially what we started doing, we utilized some outside trucking and utilized our roads and bridges department to start moving material just to try to get within compliance and over a little bit of time, I talked with our county council and administrator about some ideas that I had, one of which was shredding that material to consolidate, waste reduction to make space."

Raines said the shredder also takes out metals.

"We put it into work Aug. 1 of 2021, and we went to work and, in a year's time, we're back below capacity," said Raines. "We went from 25-28,000 cubic yards over capacity to almost 180-190,000 under at this point. The work that we’re working on that you can see behind me is just some of the overage that we had, we’re trying to get that all transferred out so that we can get back to net zero."

Thanks to the shredder, Raines said the landfill will stay open.

"I see many years to come of us being able to work in this landfill and not having to worry about transferring things out, saving taxpayers' dollars," said Raines. "Our citizens do a lot for our county and our council does a lot for us and any way we can do cost saving, that's what we're after and this is where we're winning here."

During the holiday season, Raines reminds people in the community to break cardboard boxes apart and take plastic and styrofoam out of them.

Raines also encouraged people to call their office to schedule a visit to the landfill to learn more about it and the work they do.