After a week full of ribbon-cutting, Councilwoman Susan Keith and the rest of the Selma City Council cut more ribbons and released balloons at the kick-off for the new Selma Recycling Program, located in the parking lot behind the Selma Interpretive Center.

“Selma is going green,” Keith said.

She said recycling is simply more economical than waste and she hopes to one day see trash in the city landfill as almost non-existent.

“We need to reuse, reduce waste and recycle,” Keith said. “There is simply money in recycling and not money in waste, it costs us money to waste we profit when we recycle.”

She said most cities the size of Selma and larger already have recycling efforts in place and have had them for quite some time now.

“There are economic development opportunities in recycling,” Keith said. “Last year in Alabama, we spent $37 million disposing of $97 million of trash and that’s $124 million that we threw away literally. If we had only harnessed 10 percent of that we could have put 1,400 Alabamians to work and if we would have harnessed all of that money we could have put 14,000 Alabamians to work.”

Now, two large recycling bins sit in the parking lot on Broad Street behind the Selma Interpretive Center, as well as several other locations like in the old Wal-Mart location near Piggly Wiggly on Highland Avenue and in Bloch Park near the tennis courts.

“This sets the basic infrastructure because this is just recycling paper, plastic and corrugated cardboard,” Keith said. “My goal is to essentially get rid of garbage cans and to not have much going to the landfill. I hope that we are throwing nothing away.”

She said she plans on this program growing larger as big recycling companies have already spoken to her about the opportunities for recycling in the city. But for now Keith wants to build upon, “small successes.”

She would eventually like to see trash pick-up companies grind and mulch tree limbs for fertilizer and for people to start composting their own fruit and vegetable scraps.

“It is going to be a long process and it requires lots of education,” she said. “We will be hearing a lot about that in the coming year.”