Hi everyone I'm Milissa Rierson I'm the communications manager with the city of Franklin
and I'm so excited to announce the winners of our blue bin recycling bin early adopters contest we
chose 100 winners that will get a free set up fee that's $48 that we're separating out over 12
months for most people the ones that didn't win and it's $48 a one-time setup fee but these 100
people that you see at the bottom of the screen are our 100 winners that have their fee waived
you can also find the list of those winners at Franklin TN gov slash blue bin and if you didn't
register for your blue bin you can call right now there's someone online to help you and the
phone number is 6 1 5 7 9 4 15 16 you don't even need your account number all you need is your
name address phone number and email address and if you can't call message us on Facebook and we
can register you online lickety-split and again that phone number is 6 1 5 7 9 4 15 16 and we'll
announce our big winner we have one winner who won two tickets to two-day general admission tickets
to the pilgrimage Festival and if you missed this guy right here behind me this is our new
mascot this has been Franklin and he is available to come to your preschool or school and visit and
teach the kids about blue bin recycling now we want to teach you a little bit more about our
blue bin recycling process and we have our city administrator Eric Stuckey and also Nate Ridley
from our sanitation and Environmental Services Department they're here to tell you about the
blue bin and show it to you right now come on Ben Franklin all right hey everybody I'm here
with Nate Ridley Nate is the assistant director for sanitation environmental services with the
city and we're gonna answer some questions and give you some facts about our new blue bin so
we've got them right here and here's of course our friend Ben Franklin our new best friend but let's
look at these bins you have our normal trash bin right here the the black rollout and now this is
what the new recycling bins will look like so Nate tell us the difference between the two a
little bit about them well the difference between the two of course black are you gonna put your
garbage in here it's a 96 gallon of container and then you got your blue in for the recycling it's
a 64 gallon container which is a little bit smaller a little bit slender so you'll have
plenty of space to store this container alright that's great so you'll also see on here we have
a little mock-up we have this informational sign that will be integrated or burnt into the lid of
our recycling bins tell us about the information that's on there information we have on here you
can do plastics ones and twos you can still do your aluminum containers you can still do the
steel cans you can still do the cardboard you want to break your cardboard down to make sure that you
get it into container and if you have extra cardboard you can take it to your convenience
center or we're working on the possibility of having a drop-off site at 4:17 since your court
all right Thank You Nate all right couple other things to ask you about all right so when will
these start being collected or when will they one will the rollouts roll out when will they
hit people's houses and what does that mean and when do we maybe stop taking the blue bags talk
about that whole timeframe where our plan is to roll the containers out in January of 2020 so
you'll get to see them probably the the first week of January and we plan to stop picking up
blue bags some March to 30th ok so be ready for that we had so far in August up through August
over 6000 of you registered that's great but we need more to come so you can still register and
Melissa gave you some great tips on how to do that you can do that by calling us by getting online by
messaging us on Facebook and we'll get you set up all right so other questions that we have let
me look at my little cheat sheet here okay could I just buy one of these blue ben's on my own and
not pay the setup fee and just buy it by myself how does that work um well it works like this oh
no you can't buy it on your own the cans are spec for the trucks the setup fee is our $48 you'll pay
$4 a month for 12 months and they equal your $48 all right so they they are actually owned by the
city that's your setup for you to get started in the program and help pay for us getting going on
this and so you need to use our bag because it's standardized equipment and that way we can use it
and that way too also we fix it and take care of it if there's ever an issue so that's another good
thing all right so you talked about what can go in there the recycling markets been changing so
we've had to kind of narrow what we can take talk about plastics we also have people asking us about
well can I put glass in there talk about those two issues and related to both what Franklin does but
also the broader recycling market yes we're now down to plastics ones in twos that's what they
were taking the recycling market now and actually the plastic bag is considered a contaminant now
so we want to make sure we keep that out of the waste stream we're still taking most of
the same stuff we'll still take the cardboard no styrofoam there's no styrofoam and the glass the
glass market it's still the same we will not take glass but we're looking for options for recycling
glass so that you can do at a drop-off center for Williamson County and again we're looking at
an option to have a drop-off area at our century Court location right off of Columbia Avenue okay
so we talked about when these are coming out we talked about what can go in them let's see what
else do we need to cover okay if I live in an apartment can I get one of these blue bins at
the current time you cannot everyone that has a black container at their resident can get one but
we're also working on options for the apartments also okay so stay tuned you apartment dwellers
about that option and one more question for you Nate are you excited yes sir I am alright we're
ready to get going the blue bin will help us be more efficient in taking care of recycling it'll
help us save some money over the long haul cuz it'll it'll get it done faster quicker it also
helps us with folks that can process our recycling because the blue bag is actually trash or waste in
the recycling process so by going to a Bend we get rid of that waste we make it easier simpler
to process and that may open up some markets for us that we don't have today so we thank our
citizens that have already gotten on board we're so impressed that nearly 7,000 of you have done
it so far we need some more and Melissa's here to tell you more about it and to announce our
big winner so take it away but I do wanna let you know that we are gonna be at Pumpkin Fest we have
jack tucker over here jack come on over here come around here over here this side and he is modeling
our wonderful t-shirt that we all are modeling and our hats so if you want to just take away
one of those for free you can come to Pumpkin Fest we'll have people on site to register you
for your blue bin and that's really easy all you need is your name phone number email address and
address and we can do that and you can do that also by calling right now six one five seven
nine four fifteen sixteen or you can message us right here on Facebook and we'll register you
and thank you mister Ben Franklin for being here today we appreciate it if you want Ben Franklin
to come to your school or your preschool just let us know he's great and the kids love him if
you want to learn more about blue bin recycling and now for our big announcement the winner of
our pilgrimage certificate of donation to two-day general admission tickets and our winner is Daisy
Broughton and she lives on Arsenal Drive we'll be reaching out to her to let her know she won
if you know her and she's not watching call her up and let her know but we'll also do that and thank
you everyone for registering early and we hope to get to 10,000 by October so please register now