Early each week, a sight familiar to residents of Houston is Danny Carter and the city’s recycling truck and trailer.
Carter has been picking up materials for recycling from homes in the city limits on Mondays and Tuesdays since 2011. He begins his route on Mondays (even on holidays) at about 6 a.m. and finishes it at about 10. On Tuesday, he goes out from about 6:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Carter takes the cardboard, plastic, tin and aluminum he collects to the South Central Correctional Center (SCCC) in Licking, while glass and paper products go to the City of West Plains. He makes two trips to Licking each week, going once about half way through the Tuesday route and again on Thursdays.
Glass Carter collects is stored in another trailer, which he takes to West Plains when it fills up about every couple of months.
According to Missouri Department of Corrections public relations representative David Owen, Houston is the only city that brings recycling material to the Licking prison, but Intercounty Electric Cooperative and Licking Schools brings loads about once a month.
Owen said the material is combined with the prison’s own material and baled and stored before being sold to the highest bidder among several Missouri vendors. Houston provides about 600 o 700 pounds of cardboard each week, Owen said, along with 70 to 100 pounds of plastic and a small amount of tin.
Before taking on Houston’s recycling duties, Carter, 69, drove the city bus for 20 years. Prior to that, he spent 18 years working at the Brown Shoe plant in town after a stint with the U.S. Navy.
The truck and specially-designed trailer Carter uses on his route was obtained by the City of Houston through a grant in 2006. Carter said he has at times run across some odd items left in recycling bins at the end of driveways.
“I can’t tell you about some of it,” he said, “but there’s some stuff that we don’t recycle and I try to catch it and it goes in the trash. But I can say I’ve found loaded diapers, and they were messy. I’ve also found socks, jeans and even a fish head.
“One time there were some size 15 shoes; if they were 12s, I might have kept them.”
For the most part, though, Carter is impressed with the way Houston residents handle their recycling.
“About 99.9-percent of the people do a very, very good job with it,” he said. “The stuff is clean and nice and often separated, and it’s no problem picking it up and putting it in the trailer.”
One might think weather would be a big issue for Carter, but he’s had remarkably good fortune in that area.
“Amazingly, since I’ve been doing it I’ve only been rained on about twice,” he said. “The last guy who did this said the Lord must be looking after me because he got rained on about every Tuesday. He said I must be doing things right.”
Carter enjoys the work and calls it rewarding.
“I like doing it,” he said. “And it’s good that the stuff we pick up doesn’t go in the trash and end up in a landfill. It goes back into making something good.”