City of LaFayette

Abuse at LaFayette Recycling Site

Abuse at City of LaFayette Recycling cost taxpayers $41,000 annually




The City of LaFayette’s recycling program has been being abused for quite some time and at a shocking $41,000 annual cost to taxpayers.

The city offers its residents a free single stream recycling service where paper, plastic and glass products can be mixed together. The bins are picked up by Fontana and sent to West Rock Recycling in Tennessee and separated at a cost the city.

However—over the past several years—the free to the public service has been abused and treated like a dump, where the persons responsible are dumping household garbage, metals, aluminum, contaminated plastic and paper products that can’t be recycled.

The recycling service is located between Farris Street and Shaw Street in LaFayette.

LaFayette residents have weekly garbage pickup which is charged to their individual utility bill. The city also offers free brush and debris removal based on a certain weight.

This abuse costs our Public Works Department several wasted hours each week removing the garbage from the recycling location and sent to the landfill, thus keeping them from continuing to clean the four wards within the city.




This is especially difficult for public works on Fridays as the city’s knuckle boom drivers are off and no one is certified to drive the knuckle booms which leaves other public works officials to remove the waste by hand.

The purpose of the recycling program is to benefit the environment.

Recycling reduces the need for extracting (mining, quarrying and logging), refining and processing raw materials all of which create substantial air and water pollution.

As recycling saves energy it also reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which helps to tackle climate change.




So, if the goal of the recycling program is to reduce waste and save energy, the abuse at the LaFayette facility makes the free service moot and, unfortunately, a waste of taxpayers money.

“This has become a major issue within the Queen City of the Highlands. We want our citizens to be proud of where they live and be able to reside in a clean and beautiful area. It’s costing our citizens too much each year and we are going to have to do something to fix this abuse. We need the citizens of our great city to help us be watchful for anyone abusing this service, or we will have to do away with providing the recycling service in the City of LaFayette,” City Manager David Hamilton said.