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COLUMBUS — Columbus city officials accepted a $36,000 Recycling for Texans grant awarded by H-E-B and Keep Texas Beautiful on Friday, Aug. 28, at the Columbus Recycling Center.
The grant will fund the addition of a new recycling baler, expansion of recycling education and outreach, and the implementation of updated facility signage. The city currently only has one recycling baler, a large machine that compresses waste materials in dense, bound blocks. The addition of a second will double the city’s recycling efficiency.
“The Columbus Recycling Center plays an important part in helping our residents recycle, reduce waste, and keep our community clean,” Columbus Mayor Lori An Gobert said. “Support like this allows us to continue improving our recycling efforts and providing valuable services to the people of Columbus and the surrounding areas.”
Columbus partnered with Keep Texas Beautiful to create its affiliate Keep Columbus Beautiful in 1996. Since then, the city has recycled six million pounds of materials that has brought in $275,000 in revenue, according to Keep Texas Beautiful program director Lou Serna. In the past year alone, the city has recycled 75,000 pounds of materials that brought in about $5,000 in revenue.
RECYCLING, 14 “This grant is much more than a financial contribution. It is an investment in our community, our environment, and our future.”
— Columbus Mayor Lori An Gobert “One of our biggest strengths is our network… The synergy that we see together of the affiliate (Keep Columbus Beautiful) and recycling center is really the mission of what we’re trying to do, (which) is educate the community, inform them about what’s going on, and really see action take place in communities like Columbus,” Serna said.
The Recycling for Texans grant program is a col laboration between H-E-B and the nonprofit Keep Texas Beautiful that seeks to “identify target communities to enhance their local recycling efforts through strategic investments in infrastructure and education.”
“We recognize that we have to be responsible of the materials that we’re putting out into our environment,” H-E-B Environmental Affairs Manager Anahi Villarruel said. “For us, that means investing in communities like these who already have access to recycling, but they just need a little bit more to help expand their services.”
Gobert thanked H-E-B for being a long-time community investor, especially for the city’s Fourth of July fireworks show, as well as Keep Texas Beautiful and the Columbus Garden Club.
“This grant is much more than a financial contribution. It is an investment in our community, our environment, and our future,” Gobert said.
