Curbside recycling is back, but only on the East Bank

Curbside recycling is making a return to St. Charles Parish, but only on the East Bank due to the demand for the service on that side of the river.

Phoenix Recycling Inc. will offer curbside recycling to homes and businesses in Destrehan, New Sarpy and St. Rose starting on June 22. Prices for residential pick-up start as low as $10 per month.

They offer many different plans including bi-weekly, weekly and monthly pickups.

Phoenix Recycling owner David McDonough said that those East Bank areas have expressed the most interest in the program, but if demand rises on the West Bank then the company will try to expand their service area.

“We’ve only heard from a couple of people on the West Bank who are interested,” McDonough said. “It wouldn’t take much more interest (to get services to the West Bank), but we’re going to start on the East Bank where we know there’s a demand.”

McDonough said that those who are interested in curbside recycling but are not included in the new service area can easily let Phoenix Recycling know that they want to be included by signing up for the service online at phoenixrecyclingnola.com.

“The site will capture their information for us and let us know where they live,” McDonough said. “It’ll put them in a dummy route and then we’ll know the demand based on how many people sign up. It doesn’t commit them to anything.”

McDonough said that while monthly recycling drop-off options offered by the parish are better than nothing, everyone driving to the sites and burning up gas could be counterproductive.

“We cover a lot of ground in one day,” he said. “If everyone brought their own material to drop off, there would be a lot of gas burned - gas that we could have saved by taking the trip for them.”

Dawn Lotshaw, a Destrehan resident and mother of four, has been requesting curbside recycling services from the company for several years.

She said she regularly uses the parish’s drop-off days but that it is difficult to store a lot of recycling in her garage for so long.

“I saw an article for Phoenix Recycling several years ago. I contacted them and they said they weren’t in St. Charles Parish yet, and so they approached the council members and I was there and met them,” Lotshaw said.

Lotshaw said the council was not interested in renewing a curbside recycling program in the parish at the time because of funding, but she continued to follow the recycling company.

“I followed their business - they have a real passion for what they do,” she said.

Now that curbside recycling is available to Lotshaw’s area again, she hopes that other residents will sign up for the service.

“I hope that their presence in the area will encourage people to jump on the band wagon,” she said. “All over the nation (recycling) is incredibly important and I think that Louisiana is just a bit behind in that same passion, but our children’s and grandchildren’s generations are going to be permanently impacted by the amount of trash, waste, landfills and toxic things that are in the landfills, so I think it’s absolutely important.”

Lotshaw said she hopes many of her parish neighbors will sign-up and increase the amount of recycling, but she worries that any cost at all may deter them.

“I think people are very reluctant to pay for anything as far as recycling - they want it as a service but they don’t want to have to pay for it,” she said. “I don’t care because I think it’s something that needs to be done.”

Phoenix Recycling has been in business since 1991 and began curbside recycling in Orleans and Jefferson parishes when parish governments stopped the services after Hurricane Katrina. They have recycled over 11 million pounds of material since 2007. The company collects paper, cardboard, plastic, tin and aluminum.

Residents of Destrehan, New Sarpy and St. Rose can sign up for curbside recycling at http://phoenixrecyclingnola.com. There are multiple start dates to choose from and prices range from $10 to $15. Businesses in those areas can also sign-up online and pricing is based on volume.