HEIGHTS-AREA RECYCLING CENTER GOING TO THE CLEANERS 
Up for a vote in this morning’s city council meeting: The sale of the First Ward recycling center at 3602 Center St. to the owners of a neighboring property for $2.01 million. Under the agreement, the city would lease back the 1-acre lot near the corner of Washington Ave. and Heights Blvd. for 18 months from Admiral Linen Service — for free. A plan to set up a new area recycling facility on Spring St. was halted 2 years ago. Update, 1:20 pm: Voting on the issue has been postponed until next week. [Houston Politics; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Alexander W.
Sign up for the Newsletter
I hope that this means they will be rolling out the big green cans to the rest of us in the heights. If they close this site and don’t offer anything more than the green bins that we currently have, people will slowly stop recycling (me included). It stinks that we can’t put glass out in the bins and if not convenient to drop off on Center St, what are we to do?
Does anyone know of when the city is planning/going to expand the large green cans to the rest of the heights?
Now if the city can deliver those smaller green curbside single-stream recycling bins to all of The Heights, this wouldn’t be so bad. Then I won’t have to deal with the constant annoyance of the local bums when I drop of my recyclables. Maybe they can use the 2 million on the sale to fund the purchase. I won’t hold my breath.
So where are we supposed to take our glass now? (serious question)
Amen on the single stream bins. Crazy that we don’t have a half-decent recycling program in this city.
Completely agree with BamBam. I can guarantee I will stop recycling if we don’t get single-stream recycling (96 gal. green bins). Let’s face it, for those of us who take recycling seriously, those little green bins just don’t cut it. I’m not going to haul 6 or 8 bins to the curb only to have vagrants dig through all of them looking for cans and dumping the stuff they don’t want in my ditch. I think it would be reasonable to expect the city to roll out single-stream to all homes within 2-3 miles of the recycling center before it closes.
For some reason Mayor Parker blocked a plan to do a real City-wide recycling program because it would have required a fee. I guess her drainage fee was more important.
The city had said at one time that the entire city should have the green cans in a few years. I don’t know if that changed with budget constraints and the new mayor. You can go to http://www.houstontx.gov to find out about drop off locations for recycle items the city doesn’t pick up.
Admiral Linen Service is not one of the facilities I thought would have that kind of money to expand. I figured those Washington corridor warehouses were a dying breed. Good for them though, I guess the townhouses need some kind of buffer from the train tracks.
There’s a recycling center for glass ONLY on Judiway between Ella & Rosslyn (in 77018). Before we got the rolling bins up here, that’s where I took my bottles, etc. if I didnt have time to go to the Center Street lot. I will be sorry to see this go, and especially not replaced. It served a LOT of people, and was just around the corner from that poor townhouse next to the tracks that we’ve been mocking.
We’ve got one of those larger single stream recycling containers and the pickups are every 2 weeks on them, compared to trash pickup which is every week. As it turns out now, I wish the cycles were reversed. We recycle so much of everything now we need our recycling picked up every week and our trash every two weeks!
I will admit to loving the bigger green wheeled recycling bin but to threaten to stop recycling unless you get one would seem to me to suggest that we don’t take recycling seriously at all. People in countries that take recycling far more seriously than us still separate all of their recyclables themselves and take them to central facilities. Our need to have the lowest personal effort solution in order that we recycle at all speaks volumes about our committment to it.
By the way the artcicle states that Solid Waste intend to continue expanding curbside pickup over the course of the 18 months before this facility closes.
Last I heard teh roll out of single stream bins for the rest of the Heights was on indefinite hold due to budget contraints. Would be a nice trade if we could get those with the $2+M on the sale of the property but that won’t be happening as the city is having a fire sale to try and plug the current budget deficit. Who knows what they will be selling next year unless those reports of the GRB and Hilton Americas going private come true. I think a nominal garbage fee would be a great way to fund the continued recycling effort.
Ah, the beauty of The Heights… Hobos frolocking about, stealing valuable recyclables so they can buy booze to pi$$ it in the bayou later. Don’t remember seeing that in the burbs.
Damn, I thought all of you Heights Lifers already had the big green bins, even our hood has them. Score 1 for Northside! Make that 2, if the rail ever gets built!
I haven’t been in a few weeks, but the last time I was at the glass recycling facility on Judiway, they had a notice up saying that it was closing effective some time in April. When I read it, it was already past the date specified and the bin was still there, so who knows what the actual status is.
Also, as for homeless rooting through the little bins for cans, I have to point out that the guy who comes every two weeks to root through ours is very neat and doesn’t dump out the rest of the bin’s contents while grabbing the cans. Heck, he’s neater than the city collectors who frequently spill bin contents on to the ground.
In the ‘burbs where they have no recycling programs, the bums just tip over the entire garbage bin to look for cans. They were the bane of my late father in Westbury.
Wow – we live in East Montrose and they would not give us the green roller cans as we “do not live in the zone”, so those of us east of Taft who used to get our bins picked up have two choices. One – walk across the street and dump our recyclables into our neighbors bins (which are already mostly full) or, Two – drive to the Center Street facility. Way to go Anise – thanks for nothing!
the bin on Judiway is gone and has been for the past month or so; nearest place is the semi-new city dump on North Main just up the road from Crosstimbers.
@ Hellsing Wow I am so glad that we dont have any of these issues in my burb we have the 96 gallon single sort recycle bins.
I guess most of you did not read the article thoroughly. You have an 18 month reprieve on your whining because the recycling center will remain open.
If I read this right, they aren’t taking the recycling center away for at least 18 months. Sounds like a win/win. Although this is closest to me in the Heights, to lay off a few less teachers and keep a few more cops on the streets, I’m all for driving a little further.
I keep people from digging through my cans. I have dogs. A couple of times a week, I pickup their poop and put it in a trash bag lined trashcan. When I roll my trash bin out it has a fresh bag of really stinky dog poop in it. Just lifting the lid runs everybody away.
I’ve been taking my recycling to the N. Main location for the past few months. The facility itself is pretty nice (no bums picking through the glass or anything), but the neighborhood can be pretty scary. They take colored glass, plastic, aluminum, paper and cardboard, and it’s not too far from you Heights people.
Of course, I would LOVE to have any green container to put outside my house, be it big or small, wheely or without, but unfortunately the COH does not put recycling high on its list of priorities.
My small apartment complex uses a private trash collection service, so while the neighborhood has recycling we don’t. So I can either stuff my recycling in neighbors very full bins, or take it over to Center st. every other week.
Hopefully I’ll be out of here in 18 months anyway, but the location is so popular it’ll be sad to see it go.
The West U. recycling center on Dincans is so popular that it’s becoming a little bit of a pain to use. Sometimes you have to park down the block and hike your items in because the traffic is so backed up at the entrance. Weekends are crazy over there. We need to be reading about more recycling options and not fewer.
maybe we should take the $2 million, buy the townhomes next door, tear them down, and build a new recycling center on Heights Blvd. we could even recycle the buildings!
Jimbo, right on. What kind of people threaten to stop recycling if they don’t get to recycle exactly the way they want to? Put your plastic, aluminum and paper in the green bins. The green bin should be enough every two weeks and if it’s not, then bring out another container full of your recyclables. They will pick it up as well. Keep your glass in another container and next time you are running errands in your car that takes you past the recycling center, then take it along with you. I really wish we had the big green bins but I’m not gonna stop recycling all together if I don’t.
in response to “What kind of people threaten to stop recycling if they don’t get to recycle exactly the way they want to?”
I don’t think that you are taking into account how much more gas it would take to get to a further recycling center. Additionally since it is further people probably won’t go as often – so that means they would have to make sure the bottles/cans are rinsed very well (so they don’t get roaches.) That adds another precious resource being wasted – water to rinse everything out – where as if I have the closed green container to be kept outside – I could lightly rinse and put the recyclables in there. Also there are several diff’t types of “Green” (Per a recycling marketing guru in Seattle) Light Green, Green and Dark Green. So if people are giving it a shot to recycle a bit (light green) – don’t give them a hard time if the city makes it more and more difficult to do so.