But we're gonna start the meeting with approving the minutes of March 11, 2025, and we'll just take a few minutes to review those minutes.

Okay.

I make a motion to approve the minutes.

Second.

Any discussion?

Call to question.

Okay.

And I would like to make a point yet.

He hasn't been appointed yet.

No, that's that's next.

It's Monday.

No, it's it's not yes.

See, that's my point precisely.

My point precisely.

Okay, so uh next on the agenda, I'd like to approve the appointment of Eric Allen to the Solid Waste Management Authority.

Second any discussion?

I'm sure somebody has discussion.

Discussion from anyone in the audience.

Welcome aboard.

Okay.

All right.

Call a question.

Okay.

Motions approved.

Three.

Okay.

Three.

Okay.

Okay, now you're here.

Okay.

Yeah.

The motion passed three zero with Cupid being out, and Eric abstaining.

Right.

Well, but you're here, so uh okay.

Happy Tuesday.

Um, I'd like to call.

Well, I guess I'll turn it over to you now.

No, okay.

Okay.

Uh I like to call Ray Dunbar.

And you're already here.

So good morning.

Thank you.

You can get started when you're ready.

Good morning, Commissioners, County Manager.

What are y'all doing today?

Today.

We do have quite a few slides to get through, so I won't take up too much time.

Um go ahead and get it started.

Again, my name is Rafa Dunbar.

I'm the division manager for Solid Waste Management.

And I'll I've been with the county for 11 and a half years.

And I work alongside of our business coordinator, Miss Sandra Johnson, and our landfill operators, Sean Fluker and Joshua Townsend.

And although we do quite a few different things within our department, one of our main focus um is to take care of the county three closed landfills.

And for those that may be wondering what a closed landfill is, it's simply a landfill that no longer accepts waste and permitted to be in postclosure status by the Georgia EPD.

And those three closed landfills are Cheatham Landfill, which closed in 2001 up in Ackworth off of Pitna Road, and it's 117.4 acres.

And it's 28.3 acres, and it also closed in 2001.

And last but not least, um County Form Drive Landfill, also here in Marietta, closed in 2002 off of Al Bishop across from the safety village, and it's 43.

Now before I move on to our next presenter, do we have any questions?

Click this.

I'm the general manager, and then there's Kristen Gore, who is our site manager over Cobb County, and then we have Luke Ewing Ewing, who is our municipal contract representative.

So Jesse couldn't be here today because he had a procedure.

So okay.

So basically, this is just a comparison of our year over year, kind of what we go through every single year.

2005 was a pretty pretty decent year.

I think a lot of that, you know, we talked about before in past meetings.

Douglas County transfer station had been closed for a couple years.

We have seen a massive decrease of our traffic flow.

Um typically we are stay pretty busy with traffic, but it's actually been running very smoothly.

So we'll that's always a plus.

Um Saturdays obviously are gonna be our busiest days.

So yeah, I think that it definitely didn't hurt us them opening back up.

Um so overall, we took in 2,774 more tons in 2025 than we did in 2024 with less with one less day.

Um the tons hauled to the landfill, that obviously it looked it's more tons than we took out.

Um that but the year before, of course, that probably we could have had dirt or recycling or other things or stuff that was left on the floor in 2020 uh three or four.

Um, like I said, our overall daily transactions, they're down a um 24 transactions a day, which is a massive.

I mean, overall for the year, it's 8,000 transactions, but when you divide it by the number of days that you get 24.

Um that I think has helped with our traffic flow, but we've also picked up a lot more commercial.

Um I feel like the residents have trailed off a little.

Um, but we are doing more, you know, roll off front load commercial.

Um, and then our overall payments to Cobb County were up 2,071.16 cents year over year.

Um every year we are able to work with Keep Cobb Beautiful, do a couple of recycling events.

Uh we have several volunteers for each of those events, and um, so that helps drive some of our numbers, but these are also numbers that are included in our recycling on our daily basis.

Uh the electronic recycling, we saw an uptick in that in almost of almost 10 tons.

Uh we do recycle anti-freeze.

Um, we have kind of been pointing people for the anti-freeze and oil when they call.

Hey, you guys can take this to an auto parts store and it's free of charge.

Uh, we have to pay to dispose of it.

Um, but it keeps it out of where it's not supposed to be.

Uh, we did see an increase in the batteries and metal.

We did see a decrease.

We always see a decrease.

Um, typically, or we we talked about this last week, but we typically see a decrease around the holidays.

People are like, ah, I'm not gonna throw that away, I'll recycle it myself.

Um, but and we did see an uptick in the tires.

We had a couple big cleanup jobs that were not county related, they were just from our third-party customers cleaning up uh demolition areas that were full of tires.

Um, and then we did recycle uh 1,694 gallons more of paint, so that kept more paint out of the landfill.

Um and that's one of the things we try to make sure because obviously we want to keep as much out of the landfill as we possibly can, but when it comes to that kind of stuff, people always try to hide it, so because they don't want to pay to dispose of it, but I think we do a pretty good job with making sure that that's kept out of the landfill.

Um, so I did want to add that we did make some, we spent some capital money last year, and we were able to do several parking lot upgrades uh within the facility.

Um at the end of 2024, we put in a new scale, which is about 150,000, and we are about to put in another new scale on our inbound side, and we're also going to have more parking lot repairs in 2026.

Um that parking lot is it's it's a little it gets a little rough after all these years and the traffic flow.

So that's something that we've been working on consistently throughout the years, and it's something that we've been piecing together.

And you know, the scales are the scales from when the county had it.

Um we're kind of just going year by year on hey, this is where our necessities are.

Um, and this is where we need the upgrades.

So uh as of right now, we already have on schedule for a new scale on one of the inbound sides.

So that's all I have.

You guys have anything?

Thank you.

You guys have any questions?

Perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, now up next, we'll have uh Smurf at West Rock at the recycling center and presenting.

Um Mr.

Will Howard.

Thanks, sir.

Well, good morning.

Happy Monday, Tuesday.

All right, well.

Okay, happy Friday.

All right, everybody.

Well, uh, they always say turn in five to seven slides, and I think I turned in 17 this year, uh, up one from last year.

So let's uh let's jump into it.

All right, well, welcome.

My name is uh Will Howard.

Uh I'm the general manager for uh now Smurf at West Rock.

This was our first full year as a an amalgam global company.

Um kind of getting into what that means.

Uh we we operate recycling facilities and paper mills all across the United States and Canada.

Um our business goes all the way through Europe and Asia.

We're truly a global company, the uh the world's largest paper and packaging company, which is the reason we exist.

You can see we consume hardwood, softwood, recycle, and biomass as a vertically integrated business.

Some examples of the products that we make uh is pretty much everything that is a fiber-based paper-based product as you walk uh walk down your aisle at the grocery store.

You can see some coke products, go Atlanta, uh, some Cheerios boxes, uh pizza boxes uh through our victory packaging division.

Um, if it's fiber and it's on the shelf at the grocery store, most likely we uh we have made some of those packaging.

So we began in 2009 as a basic just dump and bail, just material on the floor, it goes into the bailer.

Um we made capital investments over the years, the uh the largest being uh our investment in 2012 uh to convert the operation to residential single stream, uh some monetization projects in 2019 uh that included the addition of some optics to improve the uh the quality of the output of that material as well as the uh as well as the total cost and improving our uh our volume and throughput.

Uh, we're continuing to to do annual capital improvements to support capture and technology.

Um last this past year we spent 300,000 on our green eye one and green eye two optical sorters, sorting uh a little of this and a little HDPE as well.

Um we added on to our uh the back of the building, Cobb County's building, uh did some leasehold improvements there, and uh and we're continuing to uh to improve uh our system and the building as a whole.

Uh so the two primary facilities that we service uh and provide fiber to are Dublin, Georgia.

Uh so here keeping a lot of that fiber within uh within the state of Georgia and uh Stevenson, Alabama, just uh just to our west.

So looking at the plant, uh I just want to every year I gotta thank Cobb County for building this building.

It is a perfect building for a recycling facility.

It's got 36 foot eaves, uh, so which is tall enough to add a mezzanine system for a recycling system.

It's 235,000 square feet, which for me as someone who's ran 15 MRFs uh material recovery facilities.

This is a great size.

We have the ability to flex and hold material when the mills need us to hold that material.

We have the ability to do the things that we need to do, and it gives us a lot of operational breathing room.

Um, so just quick quick layout on the very uh the very right, uh the bottom of the hill is as we call it, the uh our scale building, our inbound scale.

Uh, we also have an outbound scale, so we have two uh two at the facility.

Uh so our traffic flow is one big loop.

Uh we have the county resident drop-off up at the light at the very top of the hill.

Uh there is a commercial tip floor, which keeps uh keeps materials that don't require processing, they're just dump and bail.

That's like your front load cardboard routes, OCC old corrugated container routes.

Those will dump on the upper tip floor.

The uh the lower tip floor is the residential single stream system.

Uh so anything that requires processing is gonna dump on that floor, and then the built the building is laid out very, very nicely and in big bays from uh from the previous tenant, where we have our finished inventory, and then we have processing capability, and then we have our loose material all corrugated or all segregated off.

Um so very, very good size building, and again, we want to thank Cobb County for that.

So, what's inside of it?

Uh, we're another one of those capital implementations.

We're getting ready to uh replace our uh Harris Baylor, Harris Centurion 200 horsepower fiber baler.

Um that's the one that's bailing the majority of our mixed paper, our old Corrugated containers, our cardboard, SOP, uh, which is about a 400 ton a month uh clean clean business of that.

Then our IPS baler is our single stream baler that's running most of our non-fiber.

So that's gonna be your different grades of plastics, your different grades of metals.

Um, and then uh our single stream system is probably the the most interesting part of the building.

So again, I'd like to invite everybody who hasn't hasn't been out to the plant.

It's nice to nice to meet you, Mr.

Allen.

We'd love to have you come out and see what the crown jewel cob county is.

Um our system has multiple multiple different different uh forms of automation.

So a core system is gonna be fiber screens.

So that's rolling rolling discs with a gap that separates stuff out between two dimensional, three dimensional.

Uh, where we differ as a state of the art fully automated system is we have uh near infrared optical sorters to sort and process out all of our different grades of plastics.

In addition, we're also using that same near infrared systems to separate out all of those materials that are in our finished goods of our mixed paper.

So we increased the quality.

That was that uh that 2019 upgrade.

Um then uh about three years ago we added a uh amp robot, so it's a three-axis air venturi suction system that's actually using AI.

So as the as the material flows underneath it, it's looking at what is what is flowing underneath it, and it says, hey, there's a bottle.

Let's go grab that.

Suctions it and throws it.

Uh and then, of course, the ballistic separator is kind of the next gen of those original fiber-based screens.

So as things flow through the system, things are positively sorted, and every day we're working to uh to increase the rate of capture on those.

What actually are we processing?

OCC, old corrugated containers, one of the main reasons why we're here.

It's about 60% of uh of all of our recyclables, whether that's commercial tonnage or whether that's what's coming in in residential.

Uh mixed paper is about 25% of those tons.

Um, so pretty prevalent in your single stream.

Not a lot of that is generated commercially.

Uh, most all of that is just coming in uh from residential or commercial commingled materials.

SOP, that's your shred trucks.

Those guys uh they come in, we're actually paying over the uh over the scale for that material, and then uh getting that into a uh beneficial reuse.

For non-fiber, you have PET, polyethylene terophthalate.

Uh that's about four to five percent.

That's uh that's these guys right here.

Uh your HDP is gonna be your uh milk jug bottles, like the kind of milky opaque plastic that's HD natural, and then things like the laundry detergent bottle or an oil bottle is uh gonna be your HDPE color.

Anything that's had a color added to that material.

Uh steel, I think we can all understand what a Campbell soup camin is.

Uh and aluminum UBC is uh only represents about one percent of our stream, but it is the highest value material that we have.

Um, and so it's one of the things that helps keep us profitable.

So looking at those those markets, uh, we are seeing some decline in our non-fiber pricing uh and our fiber-based pricing.

Uh so I know there's a lot of numbers up there, but I I'll show you on the graph next as the kind of blended value.

Um, the one that really is kind of impacting us right now.

If you see the asterisk on the 160 for PET, that actually just dropped to 20 dollars a ton.

Um so a lot of processing capability for PET just left the uh left the southeast.

So it's down about 25% of that processing capability, and so when supply goes up, demand goes down, price goes through the floor.

Uh so we're expecting that processing capability to come back.

Uh but it's just one of the things that we have to deal with.

We we can't control the markets, it's like the stock market goes up, stock market comes down.

But for us, we're always tracking and always understanding what that blended value is.

But here's what it looks like over the last uh four or five years.

Uh 22, it was very high.

A lot of that was uh was a function of some of the non-fiber materials really really being higher, uh, specifically HD natural.

Uh our fiber base was was significantly higher than it is today.

Um we're not as bad as we were whenever the market floored in 2023, um kind of came up a little bit, 24 remained level in 25.

We're experiencing a little bit of decline right now, mainly uh with some fiber depression as well as uh a little bit of uh a little bit of depression in that that non-fiber material as well.

So Cobb County.

We uh in conjunction with with DOT Cobb County paid for the retrofit of the county resident drop-off.

Uh it was it was kind of a sad state.

Uh it would it I heard I heard GFL talking about potholes.

We we had them.

Yeah, we had them.

Um thank you again to Cobb County for for making this nice for us to operate and really making it nice for for Cobb County residents.

Um flat graded, all concrete.

I mean, I think uh you could probably land a jumbo jet on that thing.

It's like a 12 or 15 inch slab.

Um so it'll be very, very nice for years to come.

Um that is uh is now starting to produce some dividends.

We're seeing more tons coming through there.

So we we eliminated the uh the best kept secret in Cobb County, uh being the uh the the free residential drop-off for Cobb County residents.

Uh so as you can see we're up by about 250 ish, some odd tons, uh, which is great.

We're just seeing more utilization of that every single day.

And as Cobb Count as we win with this, Cobb County wins for this because we we're paying Cobb County for uh for those materials.

Um so let's talk about payment suit and the financial impact to Cobb County for us being here.

Uh calendar year 25, uh we paid about $75,000 more to Cobb County.

Uh some of that was from tonnage from drop-off activities, uh that that nicely retrofitted center.

Uh our plant tonnage increased year over year, which means that host fee payments increase every uh every outbound sale of one thing one ton that we send into whether it's a paper mill or whether it is a a plastic mill or a steel mill or an U or a UBC aluminum smelter.

Every ton we pay Cobb County $2.50 for that.

Um so again, it's structured so that when we win, Cobb County wins.

Uh drop-off fee payments were up for the year, property lease payments are up.

Uh, our rent actually goes up again this year uh in June.

Uh it goes to $30,000 a month.

Uh so we expect to see these uh these payments to continue to rise.

And uh again, we're happy to pay it because when we win, you win.

So you can see the graph going up, and that's the direction we wanted to go.

You guys have any questions?

Um I I do have one question.

Will it was um regarding the glass?

I saw that the number is declining.

Yeah, we we're seeing here.

Let's let's run back to that thing.

Our glass is actually increasing uh from the drop off, but what you are probably looking at is the yeah, the value of mixed commodity glass is low.

The good thing about the community drop-off is that we separated in between color glass and clear glass.

Um, and so I think we get $15 a ton from that for from strategic, but your your tri-mix or really your quad mix glass.

So your amber, your green, your flint glass, which is clear glass, and your blue glass, all of that going into into one uh one broken uh pile, it's requires additional processing for them to send it through their their machine.

So the price is a negative for that.

Oh, okay.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

Um, and also at one point I recall the manufacturers uh coming up with a solution to eliminate glass um from supermarket shelves and other shelves.

Is there an update regarding that?

Have you heard anything?

I mean, for us, we're yeah, I mean we're we're mainly a fiber-based packaging.

Uh I don't want to call us a giant, but we are.

Um so really for elimination of glass, it it wouldn't be part of our industry, but I mean, the thing the thing about it is is if you if you eliminated glass from single stream, yes, it would reduce the operational burden for us because I mean we have to dispose of that material.

Um, and then I think it's still gonna come in though.

I mean, if you said no glass, we'll probably still see anywhere from five to ten percent of the stream coming in.

Oh, okay.

And also on the uh one one final thing at the recycle center, there's this cool monument there.

So if you wouldn't mind updating the slide.

Yes.

And in fact, I believe the base is made out of recycled material.

I think Emberley can confirm it.

It's it's made out of uh out of hydro block, uh, which is a plastic reinforced concrete products uh that utilize the hefty renew bags.

That's that big orange container that you see at the drop-off, um, where any of your any of your not less recyclable junk plastics go into the orange bag.

Right, we take those out, we consolidate them uh as a participant in that program, and then bail it, and we ship it out to uh out to Reynolds and Hefty.

Um so pretty cool that uh nice nice big sign in the middle.

Uh yeah, go go check out those blocks.

Actually, if you kind of touch them a little bit, they have like almost a a plasticky feel uh to them.

So yeah, that was generated out of that program.

Yep, okay, cool.

Thank you.

And I thank Kimberly White for spearheading that, but thank you.

I don't have anything else.

I don't know if Commissioner Burrell have any questions for you.

No?

Okay, good.

Thank you.

Thanks, everybody.

Happy Friday.

Happy Friday.

Thanks, sir.

All right, so up next from the vegetative waste site.

We got Mr.

Dennis Carey with tag grinding.

Yes.

Well, first of all, let me apologize for being late.

I was on time, but I was at the wrong place.

Uh Ms.

Johnson's uh memo had 1772 County Services Parkway on it, so that's where I thought it was, and it's 100 Cherokee Street, so I apologize for that.

Uh okay, well, tag grinding services has been in business for a long time.

I think about 92.

We bought the business in uh in 19, 2019, and we've we've owned it since then.

The uh the two owners are myself, Dennis Carey and Garland T.

Byrd Jr.

Uh, he goes by Buster.

Um here is a slide that shows uh our customer count by month for the years 23, 24, and 25.

And and I'm I'm just assuming y'all know you guys know what we do.

We receive biomass uh in all forms.

Some of it is big enough and long enough to sell as pulpwood or logs, and then we we do that when it's when it's the right size, we we'll sell it for logs and pulp wood.

When it's not, and most of it's not, we grind it up and uh we sell it to various mills, and I'll get to that in a little bit, but we sell it to various mills, and what they do with it is they burn it, generate steam, and make electricity.

So any questions you have about any of these slides, just let me know, please.

Thank you.

Income to Cobb County from the dirt pit.

Uh the dirt pit came along about three years ago.

Uh Dr.

Jenkins at the time came to us and they needed a place to put dirt.

So it took us a year to permit it, but we got it permitted.

And uh and we've received uh we received dirt every day, five days a week, sometimes six.

Uh it varies from uh from months to month, as you can see.

Um that's 24 and 25.

25 is a lot more than 24.

In 25, we paid the county 148, 810 from the dirt.

We we received the biomass that we're we're paid to receive it.

And we're paid to receive the dirt.

We also remove some dirt from the dirt pit and sell it, but whatever we sell from whatever we receive in biomass and whatever we receive in dirt or sell in dirt, we pay the county 10 percent of the total amount of money that we receive.

Uh in uh total revenue to Cobb County from Tag, which is which is the vegetative part of it in 24 was 284,000 in 25 was 360,000.

The markets that we serve are Piedmont, Green Power, Georgia Renewable Power, Georgia Renewable Power, those are those are strictly power plants in Carnsville and Calvert, Georgia.

International paper in Rome and uh West Rock Paper in Stevenson, Alabama.

The one thing that we're really struggling with now are these markets.

We can produce more product than we can sell.

And I don't I really don't see this getting a lot better.

I hope it does.

I hope somebody builds another power plant.

But the pulp and paper industry has supported this effort to sell the biomass for for making electricity all these years, and the pulp and paper industry in our country is being basically usurped by Central and South America.

They built those plants, those mills down there about 20 years, about 20 years ago.

But and they don't have OSHA, and they don't have they don't pay their people much.

Their raw material is almost free.

When they first built the mills, they didn't have any infrastructure.

So we could compete well with them in this country because they didn't have good roads, they didn't have bridges, but now they do.

They have they have they have improved their infrastructure, and they're there's a number of mills in the Southeast that have that have closed, one in Panama City, one in Peary, Florida, one in Georgetown, South Carolina, one in Savannah, Georgia, one in Rossburg, Georgia.

These are these are major mills that use anywhere from a million and a half to two million tons of fiber a year, wood fiber a year.

And so it uh is putting a real real strain on the markets, but but hopefully that'll that'll settle out.

And uh we're we're still getting by, but it's it's that's our only problem right now.

We we we're having difficulty selling enough enough product uh, but uh maybe things will change.

Uh that's all I have.

There's a there's a grinder.

We use two different kinds of grinders as a tub grinder, and you can see the material that's behind it.

That's that's ground material.

Uh we just put you in it in a tub grinder, you just put the biomass in the top and it turns and grinds it up and spits it out on the belt, a horizontal grinder, you just feed it in and uh it works a little different, but but but the product that that are that is made uh is the same on a tub and a uh or the same on a tub and a horizontal grinder.

I think that's all I have.

Um questions from anyone.

No, thank you.

You guys have any?

No, thank you so much for your presentation.

Absolutely, and again, I apologize for showing up in the wrong place.

No worries, it's been that type of morning.

All right.

Last but certainly not least, despite a show, um the chief of sustainability, Miss Kimberly White.

Thank you, Adelaide.

Good morning, everyone.

Okay, so as usual, I have the most slides, but I promise to get us through them quickly.

Okay, thank you.

All right, so QCob Beautiful are main focus areas litter prevention, community greening, beautification, um, and then waste reduction slash recycling.

We have a number of programs that we participate in that kind of fit into our pillars.

The only one I didn't mention before was education, but that's kind of um it goes into everything that we do.

So these are our numbers between um 2024 and 2025's litter index score.

So in 2024, we had a total litter index score in the county of 1.54.

Last year for 2025, we do this litter index survey in the summer, and we had uh 1.72 score.

So that's going in the wrong direction.

The closer we are to a 1.0 means that we have a better community appearance.

So our nonprofit update, our KCB Inc.

Board of Directors, Angela Presley is our chair, Jeff Padgett is our vice chair, uh, Barry Krabs is our second vice chair, Undrus Miller is our treasurer, and then Sharon Meinhart is our secretary.

So this past year, um we we did what we always do.

We won an award.

And so we won for the National Recycling Innovation Partnership Award.

And we won this award for District 4's Project Golden Leaf.

And Project Golden Leaf Leaf stands for Leadership in Environmental Action and Fellowship.

So I'd like to stop for a second and thank Commissioner Sheffield for coming up with this amazing kind of idea and just helping us get through the last year with this and making this a reality because we were complimented so much at the entire conference really for this program.

A lot of affiliates across the country, like there are like 800 of us now.

They want to roll this program out everywhere because they they believe that this is something that really we haven't focused on before in the Keep America Beautiful World and being able to support seniors and help them beautify their yards because they don't have the mobility to be able to do so is really inspiring.

So thank you.

I talked about this a little bit last year.

So America Turns 250 years old this year.

And so as a Keep America Beautiful affiliate here in Cobb County, we are a part of the initiative to get 25,000 communities across the U.S.

We we don't have to get 25,000 communities.

We're one of those.

But Keep America Beautiful is working to get 25,000 communities across the U.S.

to sign the pledge and to do major cleanups in our communities to get ready for America 250th, which will happen this July 4th.

And so we are doing that here in Cobb County.

We're real excited on March 28th in partnership with Kennestall State University for their day of service.

So these are our numbers and just updates from 2025 programs for Bring One for the Chipper.

We collected over 7,400 trees, and we delivered or handed out 250 seedlings so that people can you know replenish the trees that we use for the holiday season.

Medication disposal days, we added an additional location in district three.

Um and I believe this is our second year doing that, and our numbers have definitely increased.

We've gone up by over a thousand additional pounds of medication from last year to this year.

So we're at 2,742 pounds that we collected throughout the county.

Our community recycling events, we had two events last year.

Um and our paper shredding, we collected over 56,000 pounds.

Um textiles, almost 7,000 metal collected, um was 35.3 tons.

Um, and that's in that's in collaboration with GFL.

They come out and help us do the events and collect the metals and electronics.

Um, we also collect like the hefty renew material at these events.

So if someone has like their orange bags, they want to drop it off, they can do so at the event.

And we collected um over 1,200 pounds, and then we had 80 volunteers in 2,800.

I'm sorry, 2,387 residents used our our facility during that time.

Our HHW event, we had over 1100 cars this year in attendance, and we had um 97,386 pounds of material collected.

That was a lot, um, and it's the most that we've collected up to this point at one of these events.

We also have our Dig in the Dirt program.

This is our garden grant program.

We're in our 14th year, um, and we were able to have nine schools that we participated with this year to help them build gardens so that the students can learn about gardens and growing food and just taking care of the earth.

And we were able to give out $7,000 in grant funds to the schools.

And um Dawn Smith is in the audience, and I want to say thank you so much because she's on my team, and uh she works really, really hard with this program to make sure that the schools um have you know all the material that they need to build these gardens.

Our adopt a mile program.

So this year or last year in 2025, we had 657 volunteers that did over 17,500 volunteer hours.

Um, one of the things that um if you notice going through the years, we had less adopt mile groups, but actually more miles.

So more groups are adopting more than one mile to cover the area and community.

So that's an interesting trend that we've just recognized over the past year.

Our hefty renew program.

So this is the program, super proud of it.

We helped grow this program here in the metro, and then also just nationally as well because we were the first community that did the program, both curbside, drop-off, and um I'm sorry, curbside and drop off.

And so we uh still participate in the program and have any user markets that turn the material this is the hard to recycle plastics into things like diesel fuel, plastic lumber, um, and you know, blocks systems, as we, as Will mentioned about the sign at the new or the renovated drop-off site over on county services.

That sign is made out of the hefty renewed material that was collected here in Cobb County, and so we're really proud of it.

Um, and if you get a chance to go over, go over, take a look at it, take a picture next to it.

I do it from time to time.

Um, it's really it's a really beautiful sign.

Okay, this is another one of our nationally recognized programs.

We won the national award for this program last year.

This is our pop-up drop-off where we can tailor make recycling um programs.

So we go out to parks or um seniors um senior services locations.

Um we partnered with Habitat for Humanity at one point, Kroger Shopping Plaza at another, um, and we're able to kind of tailor make recycling drop-off programs for communities.

Um, and so this, of course, is our picture for our um Project Golden Leaf.

We had a lot of partners that participated in this, and we just really want to thank all of them.

Um, I'm not gonna read down the whole list, but I just want to thank specifically, you know, Kennesaw State sent us a lot of volunteers to help us perform this event, and then the Parks Department Senior Services Code Enforcement.

Um, this is how we found the seniors to be able to kind of help.

Uh Walmart, Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, of course, Commissioner Sheffield.

I just really want to thank everybody.

GFL.

GFL brought us a container that helped us, you know, um clean up the yard.

So it was just a really great partnership for everybody.

So um Ripple Glass, they are continuing to grow within the Metro Atlanta market.

We have them here in Cobb County as well.

So you can go to their website and see where you could drop off glass if you are not near one of our current like dry um glass drop-off locations.

And so they have them in different places like Kroger parking lots or package stores.

Um, makes sense.

You can you know where you get it from, you can take it back to.

Um, and so the the big purple containers, you really can't miss it.

It's a beautiful color, in my opinion, the most beautiful color there is purple.

So you can't miss them.

They're they're starting to be everywhere.

So we do have our county drop-off locations for mixed um single stream recycling.

So our main location is over um at the Smart Fit West Rock location on 1775 County Services, but we also have one in District One and on Camp Ridge, and then in district four on Austell Road as well.

So this is our sustainability expo last year.

Um, this was our second expo for um that that we um participated in, and it doubled in participants and um vendors, and so we're looking forward to another successful sustainability expo that will be happening on April 8th this year.

So our sustainability updates, we have some projects and just initiatives and things we've been working on.

Um, of course, our renewable energy projects like solar initiatives, we're still looking into that.

Expanded recycling initiatives, we're recycling inside of um county buildings now, this building being one of them, um, the senior services main building being another.

Um, we're working with uh extension services in elections as well.

And um we are also doing compost recycling, so we're working on that as well.

We have a recycling coordinator that's working on some composting, which will be really nice to be able to offer to residents here in Cobb County.

Um we I would like to skip down to the green communities renewal.

So proud of Cobb County once again for the second time we got platinum, which is the highest level you can be given from the ARC for to be a green community.

It's really difficult to get that status.

Um mostly cities get it because we have so many moving parts, um, but there are only two uh counties in the metro that have it, and we're one of them, and so we'll get to keep that designation for another four years.

And then, of course, our beautification collaboration projects.

And this is talking about the Project Golden Leaf.

So these are some of our upcoming events.

But we have a tree planting coming up, our district four annual community cleanup on the 28th.

The 28th is also the America 250th Countywide GAC cleanup.

April 8th is our community sustainability expo and forum.

April 11th is our community recycling event at Jim Miller Park.

Both of those on the 8th and 11th are both at Jim Miller Park.

The 25th is medication disposal, three sites.

Okay.

Any questions?

You guys have any questions?

Go ahead, Commissioner.

Just thank you so much.

As you say, another nothing unusual, another award-winning year.

But we're proud of you and appreciate you and your staff and all you do.

And keep the medical disposal day at Tim D.

Lee.

It's always a big hit.

And really at the senior center is a great way for folks to come on a Saturday and dispose of their medication, expired medication properly.

So it's I know it's busy.

We used to just go to Precinct One.

But now we have other options and in the South too.

So thank you for all you do for all of our programs.

Thank you.

Is there anything else?

No.

Okay.

I think that'll do it for us.

Thank you all for giving us your time to present this morning.

And if you all ever think of any questions, you can feel free to contact me or Ms.

Kimberly White.

Other than that, any other questions?

All right.

No.

Thank you, Ray.

Thank you so much.

And congratulations for your recent promotion.

You did fantastic today.

So thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you for to everyone for being here today, to our haulers and also our community residents for joining us.

And thank you for your partnership to our haulers and to Kimberly White for the fantastic work that you do on behalf of Cobb County.

Thank you.

And I think that will conclude the meeting.

If we don't have anything else, so the meeting is adjourned.