The Green Project

There is in an incredible amount of waste in New Orleans. Spend ten minutes on infamous Bourbon Street and you’re likely to notice that all that excess creates an awful lot of excess and sadly, other than some recently instated Saturday drop-offs, there is no city-wide recycling in post-Katrina New Orleans.

As we were taught by Phyllis Jordan, Executive Director of The Green Project, recycling and sustainable living is absent in New Orleans in part due to a lack of leadership and dire economic times, but also because of a lack of education. Jordan operates her sustainable business of reselling used home fixtures and building materials out of a warehouse in city’s ReUse District. By encouraging reuse of materials rather than buying new, Jordan and her staff make one person’s trash into another’s treasure. In fact, the success of The Green Project, the ReUse District, and in part, the city is dependent on changing people’s notions of what constitutes trash.

Before Katrina, residents of New Orleans separated trash from recyclables and set both curbside for regular pickup, but in the aftermath of the storm, with no businesses to generate taxes, recycling—along with many others services—ceased. Five years later, with much of the city in recovery mode, the opportunity to reinstate recycling and promote sustainable living could not be more evident.

Poised to seize this opportunity, Jordan has accepted the challenge of setting up a pilot recycling program in a diverse cross section of the Faubourg Marigny, Bywater, the 7thWard, St. Roch and St. Claude neighborhoods. The goal of the pilot program is to gauge residents’ interest in recycling and make the benefits of recycling clear to government officials. Residents participating in the pilot program will put their recyclables curbside in one container (single-stream) where they will be picked up twice a month by dump trucks already serving the areas trash disposal needs. Jordan expects the program will be cost neutral and easily integrated into the existing disposal system.

Jordan understands that to achieve success, the program will require far-reaching education and outreach efforts. Residents will need to be trained, as she mentioned earlier, to identify waste from recycling and to integrate sustainability into their daily lives. (Those participating will also expect to see a reinvestment of any monies made back into their communities.)

The importance of recycling in New Orleans goes well beyond cleaning up the streets. Reuse and recycling are part of a much broader mindset focused on sustainability that is crucial not just to ongoing rebuilding efforts, but in preserving a historic city precariously positioned between oil rigs, industrialized trade, and the rest of the nation.

Our nation’s dependence on oil had a devastating effect on the city of New Orleans (and the gulf coast) long before the BP spill. When oil production began, canals were dug in the wetlands to allow for drilling. These canals let in saltwater that changed the composition of the brackish water and eroded the shoreline. Diminished shorelines leave the city vulnerable to future hurricanes which could perpetuate the cycle of disaster and recovery in such a way that recycling and sustainability once again become frivolous.

Because the entire nation benefits from New Orleans’ location, protecting the city from this perpetual cycle is in the interest of the entire nation. For those who call the city of New Orleans home, adopting a sustainable mindset and making lifestyle changes to reuse and recycle that are encouraged by groups like The Green Project is imperative, but for those us benefiting from what the city offers, it is an obligation.