New Trash and Recycling Bins

Brooke Francis has been an amazing volunteer who has made a great impact at the Chattahoochee Nature Center. She was in the summer camp Leadership and Naturalist Training Program for the past two summers at Camp King Fisher and is also a Girl Scout who built three new recycle bins for the Nature Center as part of her Gold Award. Read on to find out more about this exciting project. 

Brooke partnered with CNC maintenance staff, friends, family, and a local vendor’s tool and materials experts to design, build and deliver three new and improved trash and recycling bins for our nature center.

She had already done some research on recycling at the National level and learned that every time someone chooses to recycle, they help to protect our environment a little more. Brooke also learned that since the United States does not have a federal recycling program, recycling decision-making is currently in the hands of the 20,000+ communities in the US. Combining this understanding with additional observations from her volunteer work at our summer camps and discussions with some of our maintenance staff, she became aware of an opportunity to help make it even easier and more convenient for patrons and staff of our center to dispose properly of trash and recyclables.

The main improvements made to the bins include;
1) Taller bins with front openings and plenty of room to pull the containers out for waste removal. The old design bins required the trash cans to be lifted straight up for emptying.
2) Pressure-treated wood and a 10+ year stain to ensure the bins will resist weather and bug damage for many years.
3) Additional quantity of bins to help make sure patrons and staff can find them easily in the high-traffic areas of our campus.

Getting trash and recyclable materials into the containers helps keep our animals safe. Additionally, recycling helps protect our natural resources. We appreciate Brooke, our volunteers, and CNC Staff for helping to make this project come to fruition!