Downtown Mobile businesses are getting a new tool to cut down on waste. The City of Mobile has launched a curbside single-stream recycling pilot program for businesses along Dauphin Street, giving downtown shop and restaurant owners an easier way to recycle without leaving the block.
Under the new program, any interested Dauphin Street-area business can receive a blue recycling cart at no cost. City crews will collect the material directly from downtown curbs and haul it to a transfer station, where it is combined with recycling from elsewhere in the city and moved on to a dedicated recycling facility for processing.
Mayor Sandy Stimpson framed the pilot program as part of a broader push to reshape how the city handles recycling and litter. “I’m thankful to these businesses for helping us lead the effort to become a cleaner, greener community,” Stimpson said. “In the past, the city has simply not devoted enough resources or attention to recycling, but that is no longer the case. Our ultimate goal is to create a more robust recycling program while eliminating litter throughout our city. When recycling is more convenient and less confusing, more people recycle and people who recycle are less tolerant of litter.”
The downtown pilot builds on changes the city made months earlier, when it moved to single-stream recycling and opened two additional public drop-off sites — one near the Mobile Museum of Art in the parking lot of the city’s Western Administrative Complex, and another behind police headquarters off Pinehill Drive. Both locations are open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends, and residents can drop off all accepted recyclables in a single container without pre-sorting.
The single-stream approach, now extended to the new downtown business cart program, accepts a wide range of materials: glass, newspapers and inserts, cardboard, magazines and catalogs, junk mail and envelopes, paper bags and phone books, colored paper, aluminum cans and lids, tin and steel cans and lids, metal pots and pans, pet food cans, plastic produce clamshells, plastic milk jugs, cereal boxes, foil baking pans, cardboard egg cartons, dry pet food bags, pizza boxes, tin foil, plastic bottles and plastics numbered 1 through 7.
By removing the need to sort materials and placing carts directly at business doorsteps, city officials hope the program will make recycling routine for the shops, restaurants and offices that line one of downtown Mobile’s busiest commercial corridors — and, in turn, help cut down on litter throughout the area.