Taking recycling into your own hands

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Last year, Austinite Bob McGivney decided to start a small recycling business.

The goal: To help small apartments and businesses that weren't serviced from the city to recycle their paper, cans and plastic.

Since then, his business has increased 10 times and become the only independent business in Austin that does single-stream recycling.

"This is normal for about a week here at the hotel. You can see aluminum, card board, plastic," said Wandering River Recycling owner Bob McGivney as he pointed out the 1 ton of recyclable material in a bin.

The Sheraton Hotel in Downtown Austin is making an effort to recycle 60 percent of its waste. And they're trying to make this big difference by hiring the small Austin company Wandering River Recycling.

"I think a lot of people are rethinking the way that they do a lot of aspects of their business," said McGivney.

When we caught up with McGivney last year, he was building containers for businesses to place their cardboard in and was loading the recycling bins onto a trailer attached to his pickup.

Yet, that was when he only had nine customers.

One year later: "It took on a life of its own because people really got excited about it," said McGivney.

Now, he services 100 businesses with two new trucks, four employees and heavy-duty containers.

"We can roll the bucket off the truck, and within 24 hours, we're doing single-stream recycling," said McGivney.

It now means training businesses on what to recycle, and he's added composting.

"That makes it easy on a restaurant to combine all their organic waste in one bin," said McGivney.

The composting waste goes to a company in East Austin, and the recyclables have to be driven to San Antonio, since he has outgrown taking them to Ecology Action on Seventh Street. However, McGivney said the extra haul is offset by the amount of waste that's not going into the landfill.

"People are really behind it, and they want to recycle," said McGivney.

The City of Austin is looking to reform its recycling ordinance and require small businesses to recycle. It's all part of their Zero Waste initiative .

The city is also looking to build a recycling facility so the waste doesn't have to be driven to San Antonio.