Candidate went green with 1,000 campaign signs. Now recycling center won’t accept them.

Supporters for Philip Schley found success in the District 8 race on the Muscogee County School Board but struck out when they tried to go green with 1,000 yard signs.

Cameron Bean, the chairman and manager of Schley’s campaign, said they were turned away from the city’s Recycling and Sustainability Center after they attempted to recycle styrene signs. Schley, a former school board member, defeated incumbent attorney Frank Myers in the May 22 local election.

“I was curious to know why our recycling center might not take the signs and found a couple of articles online about the expense of recycling that type of material,” Bean said. “Apparently, certain materials are easier than others to break down and recycle.”

Derived from petroleum and natural gas by-products, styrene helps create plastic materials used in thousands of strong, lightweight products. Styrene is used in everything from food containers and packaging materials to cars, boats, computers and even campaign signs.

Pat Biegler, director of Public Works which includes the recycling center, said there is no market for recycling styrene and mixing the plastic coated material with cardboard does more harm than good.

“I can tell you basically that most of the signs are plastic coated and we can’t recycle that,” Biegler said Friday.

She also noted that such materials must not get mixed in with recyclable cardboard and paper items. “If we take them and put them in with our paper, it becomes a contaminated load and we will get it back,” she said.

While there is no market for styrene, she said the market for recyclable paper, metal and plastic is depressed. “The market has been pretty depressed on everything,” she said. “We are still able to move most things though, not plastic coated or wax coated.”

Biegler said the group could remove the metal stakes from the signs and recycle the metal. The plastic coated boards must be discarded in the landfill.

“If they want to take the metal off, we will definitely add that to recycle,” she said. “The cardboard, we can’t .”

Bean said the campaign selected the styrene signs because they are lightweight and more durable over a long campaign season compared with the paper-type signs.

Bean agrees the styrene is used in a number of products, not just political signs. “There’s got to be a solution out there for everything,” he said. “We are just talking about one particular use of styrene. It is used in all sorts of materials you throw in your recycling bin at home.”

Schley won’t have to campaign again until his four-year term is nearly up and whether he decides to run again. Candidates, who are concerned about the environment, might want to take a closer look at available campaign signs and consider whether the material is recyclable before signs go in yards.

Going green wasn’t totally possible in this campaign. “We made every effort to do the green thing,” Bean said.

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This story was originally published June 18, 2018 at 12:18 PM with the headline "Candidate went green with 1,000 campaign signs. Now recycling center won’t accept them.."