Councilman Bob Westbrook speaks about a recycling initiative that would involve 30-gallon paper bags during Coffee with a Councilman at Fire Station No. 10 in Tyler, Texas, on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2018. (Chelsea Purgahn/Tyler Morning Telegraph)

A city councilman and a local company are working on a pilot program that would encourage residents to increase how much they recycle.

The program would allow Tyler residents to get free mulch from a company called Texas Organic if they bring in paper bags full of dead leaves and tree waste.

Additionally, the city of Tyler’s Solid Waste Department would offer curbside pickup of such paper bags twice a month to residents in The Woods subdivision.

The proposed pilot is the brainchild of Councilman Bob Westbrook, who represents residents who live east of Paluxy Drive and south of Fifth Street, and John Soules, the owner of John Soules Foods and the affiliated company Texas Organics.

“It’s time that we put our big-boy pants on and we start being better caretakers of our resources, and we already are of our water resources, and now it’s time to start thinking on the next level,” Westbrook said.

He said he has wanted to start a program since he was first elected in 2017 to expand the city’s use of recycling. Using dead leaves and tree waste is the best option because they are some of the easiest and best things to recycle.

Homes also have leaves in abundance during the fall that homeowners will either sweep into nearby streams, harming drainage systems, or put in the trash, filling up the city’s landfill, Westbrook said. He said he learned about this problem after being the president of The Woods subdivision’s homeowners association.

The City Council would need to vote to approve the program at an upcoming meeting. If approved, the program would need to run on a trial basis during leaf season, which is usually every November through February, according to Westbrook.

Tyler Solid Waste Department had a similar program back in 2015. It required participants to place their leaves in plastic bags, and the city would transport the bags to Texas Organic, where the company’s staff would take the leaves out of the plastic bags to be processed.

Soules said that program was so labor-intensive that it ended up costing Texas Organic $75 a truckload. Using biodegradable paper bags instead of plastic bags would allow the company to keep the leaves in the bag during the composting process, he said.

“The industry has discovered a way of making paper bags that hold a large volume of leaves and hold up for a pretty extended period of time out in the elements,” Soules said. “It’s not like your typical grocery sack where if it gets wet the bottom falls out.”

“It doesn’t come apart immediately, but you can go ahead and bury a truckload of those leaves bagged in those biodegradable paper bags, and in six months or so they’ll be broken down into compost,” Soules said.

He said leaves are some of the best composting material available, and it doesn’t make sense to be burying them in the landfill. He said leaves are the reason the soil on the floor of the forest has so many nutrients.

Russ Jackson, who oversees the city’s Solid Waste Department, said there have been discussions about setting up the pilot project, but those discussions are still in their infancy. He said there are concerns about the cost of a program and how to charge for house-to-house leaf pickup in the future.

“There’s a lot of things that come to the table that people really need to consider, and it might not be as big a financial (consideration), but every time you drive a 60,000-pound truck on our streets there’s some wear and tear,” he said.

“It’s not like just flip a switch and do this,” Jackson said. “Even if we started the first of November, we do have to do some logistic planning, get the word out, that type of stuff.”

Soules said he doesn’t anticipate making money from the program once it’s enacted, and he’ll be happy to start whenever the city is ready, even if that means delaying the proposed program to 2019.

“The reality is, all (the program is) going to do is make our product a little bit better, but will we make an additional amount? Probably not. I think it’s just the environmental conscientious stewardship of the Earth right thing to do.

“As I tell people, I’m not a tree hugger, but I sometimes sound like one, and I just think we have a God-given duty to do the right thing,” he said.

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