Cabot Station Recycling Station recently received a 2022 Ford Truck with the assistance of a grant made possible through the WVDEP/REAP program. Ridgeview News stopped by the Recycling Center on Thursday to speak with Executive Director Lisa Cooper who has done an amazing work at the center with the help of dedicated staff and an abundance of space and land donated by Dominion.
Lisa with Assistant Director Felicia Cronin, Floor Managers Joe Starcher and Larry Banfield work together to keep the wide variety of recycling materials coming in from Calhoun and surrounding counties organized, compacted, shredded, separated, refurbished, bundled and more. The amount of work done by so few workers was really amazing to see.
The facility is open to the community 24 hours a day for dropping off recycling. The drop off bay (with security cameras) has a large garage door opening that allows for vehicles to pull in out of the weather to unload their materials. Once inside, large labeled boxes easily show the proper place for putting each item. Items that can be brought to the center are: paper, cardboard, plastic, steel food cans, aluminum foil and food cans, household batteries, glass bottles and jars, large steel household appliances, and all types of electronic devices. Dropping off many of the items has been made possible by additional grants. Other facilities do not permit things such as glass and electronics because of the specialized disposal that must take place, and cost additional funds not always provided. Lisa has secured funding which allows the Cabot Recycling Station to accept glass, which must be separated into brown, green and clear in the boxes provided. Household trash can also be dropped at the facility during business hours for $2.00 bag, or free with every two bags of recycled materials brought in.
Tires are also accepted at the Recycling center but only every third Friday of each month with a limit of 10 tires. Rims can also be accepted.
The Station offers buy back opportunities as well which must be done on Tuesday and Thursday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 12 noon. Those items and prices are as follows:
| Dry Beverage Cans/“Clean” Metals Per lb. | Wet Beverage Cans/ “Dirty” Metals Per lb. | |
| Aluminum Beverage Cans | .25 cents lb. | .15 cents lb. |
| Cast Aluminum | .20 cents lb. | .05 cents lb. |
| Aluminum Wheels | .30 cents lb. | 25 cents lb. |
| Sheet Aluminum | .20 cents lb. | .05 cents lb. |
| #1 Copper | $2.10 lb. | |
| #2 Copper | $2.00 lb. | |
| Insulated Copper | .40 cents lb. | |
| Lead | .25 cents lb. | |
| Small Electric Motors | .08 cent lb. | |
| Brass | .90 cents lb. | .20 lb. |
| Stainless Steel | .23 cents lb. | |
| Auto Batteries | .15 cents lb. | |
| Brass/Copper Radiators | .60 cents lb. | |
| All other Radiator | .40 cents lb. |
Once the materials are dropped off that’s when the work begins for Lisa and her team. After the materials are compacted and put into bails they’re ready for transport. But it takes a considerable sum of materials to create a bail, such as 32 of the large boxes of milk jugs that Lisa is standing beside in the photo below to make one bail.
Getting the job done also comes with a price. Just one of the many pieces of equipment used at the facility like the large yellow bailer, came at a cost of $80,000.
In addition to the work done at the Station, Lisa and her team travels to different locations to give people the opportunity to recycle and educate others about the importance of recycling. They attend festivals with an information booth to speak on environmental stewardship, conservation of energy, and recycling. They are in the market for a recycle trailer that will also move to different locations and with the new truck they can now be more dependable with picking up on their regular recycling routes such as the school and area businesses that acquire a lot of cardboard each week that must be disposed of.
The Cabot Recycling Station is such an asset to the community. For more information contact Lisa on ways that you can utilize their facility or help out. Their phone is 304-354-7786.
