Kate Daft
Lawrence & Clarke Cacti Co. is literally a green company. The Old Hickory-based shop sells plants and offers growing workshops, helping folks build their own terrarium, create framed moss art and care for houseplants.
But one green thing owner Kim Daft has been struggling to do for months is recycle. A confluence of unusual circumstances, changing enforcement and implementation of different regulations has left her with a weekly pile of cardboard boxes and no above-board way to recycle them.
Plants and pots arrive at Daft’s shop in boxes (and often “boxes inside of boxes,” she says). She saves some for customers to take their purchases home, and she encourages other kinds of reuse. Customers are given a $3 credit to refill bottles of Lawrence & Clarke’s plant-care products. Some bottles have been in rotation for seven years, she says. But even if some folks also take some cardboard to mulch in their gardens, there’s still more left.
A few months ago, Daft loaded up her pickup truck to take the boxes to the Anderson Lane Convenience Center, one of Metro Nashville’s facilities for recycling and trash when curbside receptacles won’t cut it. Daft pulled in and showed her Davidson County ID. She told the attendant she had cardboard recycling to drop off and was waved inside. Once parked by the dumpster, she says, two attendants ran over and told her to leave immediately. “It’s illegal for you to be here,” she says they shouted. The problem? Her truck has commercial plates — a necessity in order for her to deliver plants around town. And convenience centers are restricted to those with standard plates and Davidson County ID.
While that has long been the convenience center criteria, enforcement has increased since the beginning of the year, with attendants checking IDs and the contents of trunks at the entrance. That’s according to Jenn Harmann, the Zero Waste Program manager at Metro Water Services’ Division of Waste Services.
Most small businesses can pay for recycling services with their trash pickup, but because Lawrence & Clarke Cacti Co. is housed in a historic building, Daft says her landlord has told her there’s no room for a recycling dumpster in the back. Daft’s private trash hauler offered a small recycling bin with monthly pickup, but it isn’t enough space to hold her cardboard. Neither is the residential bin she has at home. (Metro Nashville addresses may request up to two recycling bins for twice-monthly curbside pickup.)
In addition to Metro’s manned convenience centers, there are several Metro recycling drop-off sites. Many of these sites, such as McGavock and Whites Creek high schools, offer 24-hour access through a partnership between Waste Services and various property owners. While there is not staff on site, Metro does check and clean the sites daily. Vehicles with commercial plates are not supposed to use drop-off sites, because they are for residential recycling only, though technically it is possible for someone in Daft’s situation to drop off there. Metro monitors these sites to curb illegal dumping, not to prevent residents from recycling, according to a department spokesperson.
“We are not trying to be the trash police,” Harmann says.
Daft, who lives in Neely’s Bend, says she has several neighbors who are farmers with commercial plates and similar concerns. While Daft’s strange catch-22 isn’t a common predicament across the board, she wants a solution that doesn’t require her to skirt the law. “It is unacceptable to be treated like a criminal for wanting to recycle,” she says. “Other cities encourage you to recycle, not punish you.”
The idea is to reduce dumping of construction waste, which Harmann says has increased in recent years (and some folks with residential construction waste have been turned away from the East Nashville convenience center, directed to Omohundro instead). The convenience centers are funded by the city’s general fund for residents. When there’s a lot of commercial waste, then there’s no room for residents to drop off their food waste, boxes, bottles and cans.
Daft is aware that the city has a mounting trash problem. (More people means more waste, which means less landfill space.) And that’s why she wants a solution that isn’t merely a loophole, such as heading to an unmanned drop-off site. She’s concerned that her business may be flagged for recycling illegally there as well.
“I just want to figure this out,” she says, hoping for a pass or a card that would permit businesses like hers to use convenience centers. “Why are we making these ridiculous, arbitrary rules when people are trying to do the right thing?”
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