Bridgeton , N.J. Bridgeton, a city
in south New Jersey with 5,200 households, now has an even stronger advocate for
better residential recycling. The city’s mayor, Albert Kelly, recently spent a
morning on the back of a rear-load single-stream recycling truck in the
community where he’s been the chief executive for four
years.
“What I needed to see was the amount of recycling we are
doing in the City of Bridgeton,” Mayor Kelly said. He estimates that fewer than
10 percent of the households on the route he collected were using their
rectangular recycling container.
“That means that stuff is going into the landfill and we’re
paying for stuff that shouldn’t be going into the landfill,” he
said.
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After a safety briefing, Route Manager Ernest Pender said
the mayor worked from 7 a.m. to noon and treated Driver Frankie Batista and
Helper Eddie Velez to breakfast at McDonald’s on their break. “We let him know
what is expected because safety is our top priority and we wanted him to
understand that working on one of our trucks,” Ernest said. “He was very
excited. He did rather well.”
How Bridgeton can improve its recycling program wasn’t
Mayor Kelly’s only take-away from his day on the back of the truck. He also
developed a new appreciation for how Batista, Velez and all WM helpers and
drivers work. “It’s not an easy job being on the back of the truck in terms of
physical labor and doing the job properly,” Mayor Kelly said. “The two men I
worked with were very good teaching me what was necessary to do a
good job. It’s physically demanding. To do it correctly you need to be very
thorough.”
Photo : Bridgeton, N.J., Mayor Albert Kelly, center, takes a
break from his shift as a helper on a single-stream recycling truck with Driver
Frankie Batista, left, and Route Manager Ernest Pender. The mayor worked with
the WM crew from Vineland, N.J., to learn more about how his community
recycles.
