2026: Episode 1 - Details on Electronics & Paper Recycling Event and What's New This Year!

Stormwater Program Manager Hana Berres and Educational Program Coordinator Reilly Farrell talk about the upcoming Electronics and Paper Shredding event at the Birmingham Zoo on January 31st from 9 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. They also talk about new events that have been added to the schedule this year, and additional items that will be accepted at the Hazardous Waste Day events, like plastics, aluminum cans, and GLASS! Take 15 minutes and see how easy it is to help our local environment. Visit our "Keep It Clean" page for a complete list and details. 

Have an idea for a County podcast? Contact the Director of Public Information, Helen Hays at haysh@jccal.org

Transcript

Speaker 2 0:11

Welcome everybody to the Jefferson County Podcast for the People. I'm your host today, Helen Hayes. I'm the Director of Public Information for Jefferson County, and welcome to 2026. I'm excited to have with us today Hanna Barres, who is our stormwater program manager. And we have Riley Farrell, who is an education program coordinator. He works with the stormwater program and with HANA to make all these great u household drop events take place. And first I want to start. We have one coming up, January 31st. Riley, tell us a little bit about this. This is an electronics take back day.

Speaker 0:53

Correct, electronics and paper shedding. So this event, like you said, will be January 31st from 9 to 11:30 a.m. The event will take place at the Birmingham Zoo, which is located at 2630 Cahaba Road in uh Mountainbrook. And the event's an awesome opportunity to uh bring your electronics to break uh that will be disposed of. Any electronics that you have that contain data will be destroyed over the course of this process, so you don't have to worry about any of your information getting out. Any other electronics will be disposed of where any parts that the electronics vendor receives that can be recycled will be recycled and uh reused as they're able to. And this is a really fantastic opportunity to basically dispose of your electronics in a way that's going to allow materials to be reused, so there doesn't isn't as much new mining and new um raw material used to get new electronics, but it also means that your electronics aren't being illegally dumped or ending up in a landfill where they can cause problems to the environment. So it's a really great opportunity to properly dispose of your materials. And then in addition to the electronics, we have paper shredding, which on the note of your electronics being disposed of responsibly, where all of your data is getting rid of. If you want to make sure that all of your paper data um is being shredded so that you're not at risk of your information getting out um through your trash, then come bring paper. We accept up to five boxes of paper to be shredded at our event. Um and all this takes place at the zoo.

Speaker 2 2:28

It is awesome, and that's a super convenient location. And so these vendors that do this for us are on site at the event, right?

Speaker 2:37

Correct. They're on site.

Speaker 2 2:38

Yeah, so I've had somebody ask on social media if they could stay and watch their stuff being shredded, their paper being shredded. And that's not really possible. I mean, as much as we love to accommodate everybody, we get too many people come to this event, and that would hold up the line, right?

Speaker 2:55

Uh generally speaking, yes. If that is absolutely vital to you, if you want to see your paper get shredded, that we are able to pull you out of line um so that you have a place where you're able to watch your paper get shredded. Um however, that's not really how the event is supposed to take place. So as as you you go, we our staff members um and the members vendors' staff members will take paper or electronics out of your vehicle as you drive, and then they basically put them in containers that eventually go to get uh destroyed. So for the electronics, they take them back to their facility to get destroyed. And then for the paper, they will shred them on site, but it might not be while you're sitting there in your car. Um and so the idea is that you're keep moving so that we're able to get people through the line as quickly as possible, and your paper will be shredded within a few minutes of getting it out of your car. It just might not be while you're sitting there.

Speaker 2 3:49

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I think that's important for us to kind of explain, you know, how these vendors work and with Hanna. I think there was a time we went over there and we watched them destroy those hard drives, which was kind of impressive to watch, the machine that does that. So we know for certain that the vendor does do that and they do it responsibly. So let's move forward. Let's HANA, let's talk about big picture 2026. We we've printed some flyers that we have and we've posted those. We have more events this year than ever. Can you explain u how that came about?

Speaker 1 4:26

What we wanted to do was add more locations and areas that haven't um been easily accessible. So we've added and also in different months because we realize not every month does everybody have the opportunity at that month to get rid of their items. So we are now uh January, the last week at the zoo. March, we're in uh the Ensley Minor Parkway area at our Village Creek Water Reclamation facility. Then April, we're gonna have our hazardous waste day in three concurrent locations as we always do. May it's back in Center Point, June is back in Bessemer, and we're gonna be downtown Birmingham in September, and we have the fall hazardous waste day in October. So March and September are our new dates and new locations.

Speaker 2 5:21

I think that's fantastic, and that's covering some locations, like you said, that we haven't been in before and at a time frame. So we're gonna be um putting these all out there on our social media channels. We're gonna post these in our show notes, all the events for the year from this podcast today. So I think it's really um fantastic that we're able to offer the community more. But also with the hazardous waste day that are traditionally in April and October, we're also accepting some recyclable materials now, aren't we?

Speaker 1 5:57

Yay! So we are real excited about having more commodities that we're able to accept. And so, especially those in unincorporated Jefferson County, we don't have curbside recycling. So we wanted to add this as a pilot project, and it was so successful in October, we got the funding to do both April and October in 2026. And what we'll be accepting is uh plastics number one and number two. And wait, we're going to do glass. And it doesn't matter uh the jar or bottles, you know, Hellman's mayonnaise bottle or even a wine bottle or whatever. It doesn't matter, glass of all shapes, sizes, colors. We ask that of any of these items you rinse it out. Uh, and another one uh is aluminum that we're gonna be accepting. So save your aluminum can squish them. If you don't already recycle them, we will take those as well. And the ultimate goal of all of this is to divert it from the landfill.

Speaker 2 7:00

Absolutely. I was surprised personally, because I knew we were gonna start doing this last October. And so I just started collecting personally at my house. I had a um I had an Amazon box and I thought instead of I'm gonna start collecting my cans and see how many cans I can collect in a month to take to that day. And I was shocked that my two-person household filled up this big Amazon box with aluminum cans. And you know, without curbside recycling, you know, that stuff goes into the landfill. But now with the opportunity to recycle it, if you just have a box that you can rinse those and throw your cans in there and collect them and then bring them to us, it's a great way to dispose of them. Plastics are the same way. So um it it it's just a great opportunity. So anything else that you think we need to cover that may be new or different this year?

Speaker 1 7:58

One thing I want to hammer home is the glass. A lot of people don't think about it, but your jelly jars, your pickle jars, you know, not just your wine bottles um and possibly, you know, other drink bottles. Uh, glass, we can reduce that volume from the landfill significantly. So we're talking about 80% uh volume reduction of that. And why this is so important is no one wants a new landfill in their backyard. The longer that we can sustain the current landfill, the better off we all are. And these items, I know glass, it's not hazardous or anything, but it's the volume. Even if we can divert that to another location, we're saving again that added room uh for a landfill. And if you think you were shocked about the aluminum, you I was shocked about the glass. So uh since I know we're having one come up in April, I'm now down to my third, you know, tote, 50-gallon tote of just glass. And it's again the pickle jars, the jelly jars, all different kinds of jars. Uh, and again, no matter the the color, the size, let's try to get that out of our landfill and save the landfill for what it's meant for. And that's just garbage.

Speaker 2 9:14

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's the same with these electronics today, and you know, TVs, all those big electronics. I had somebody ask if they could bring microwaves. You can bring all that stuff to the electronics today. All that stuff can be taken. They can take out the minerals that can be recycled of that, and then that those things can be disposed of in another way instead of going into our landfill and taking up that space. So I think it's really important. We've got a lot of interest for this first event. So, Hannah tell me how how we're managing traffic. I know you guys are always looking at how to improve that process, but we always ask that people bring their patients with them to these days as well, right?

Speaker 1 9:56

Yes. And uh so we work in the roads and transportation department and we have engineers that are designed and trained in traffic control. I was pretty excited when we went with our pattern and showed our engineers, and they're like, you've got this pretty tight. Uh, but our goal is to make sure that we have the road, the main road clear uh for other people, you know, traveling through the corridor. Um, and we are going to be doing a post-it note system. So even from last year, we served 800 vehicles in two and a half hours, which is pretty significant. And again, we want you out just as fast as you want to get out because it is heavily attended. And through last year, we're also tracking the time from the beginning all throughout the event. Every 15 minutes, we do want to see how fast it takes that vehicle to get to and from. And we're looking at it about a 20 to 25 minute by the time you get in and by the time you're headed out of the event. Uh, we will have a post-it note system. So we're gonna ask you what you have. Uh, we ask that you put all your electronics uh in one area and all your paper in another area. Try not to mix those two in the same container. And we will we're upping our uh shred truck. So we do on-site shredding, we don't take it off-site. Again, there our vendors' business is to keep your business secure. So we are adding a third paper shredding truck. Last year we filled two full paper shredding trucks and um to offset. I know it was 17,000 pounds of paper we shredded on site in two and a half hours. That truck was constantly going and going and going. And as Riley said, when we take um, we have staff that will remove the items from your vehicle, they'll put them into these big garbage cans, and these garbage cans then go onto the truck and are dumped into the truck where they have these constant grinders going on and going on. So um, your item will not be unsecure while we remove it and put it in the dumpsters. Uh, the vendor is very clear about the control of that what they want and how to keep your item secure. Uh, and we ask if you bring it in a cardboard box, we will be recycling those boxes this year. We're excited, or you can put it in a bag, um a trash bag. And again, we're gonna have people unloading. We're gonna have uh about 115 people on site, uh, in and out. We have traffic flaggers, so they know what to do. We have some outside volunteers that are gonna be collecting minimal information from you. And this is how we track how many households we served, how many vehicles we served, and where people are coming from. And why that matters. We look at that data and we try to find what areas are we not uh seeing a lot of people attend from. And that's where we then go back and reestablish where we can have other events. So uh we do know that people center located uh downtown. And so we're trying to make sure that people don't have to travel more than five miles. Uh now, if you're out in the western side of Jefferson County, um, do know that we are trying to get better at that. And our goals here uh, while we do love events, um, we are also trying to do established location, drop-off locations. So we are constantly, yes, we are excited about this and adding more opportunities. What we're also trying to move towards is a more permanent, stable solution so that you can dispose of your items when it's uh easier for you to do so than uh, you know, just on the second weekend or third weekend that we have these. Yeah.

Speaker 2 13:40

Awesome. A lot of great information. I want to thank you guys both for being with me today. I would let say anybody who listens to this podcast, if you have other things with the county that you want to learn or you want to know more about, please shoot me an email. My email is um hayes, that's h-a-y-s-h at jccal.org. And we'd be happy to research that and uh put a podcast together for you. So until next time, we will see you on the Jefferson County Podcast for the people.