Club Spearheads Successful Bid for Savannah Recycling

As of last fall, there was no curbside recycling in Savannah, Georgia, population 128,000. "The city burned its recyclables in the municipal incinerator and called it 'recycling,'" says Sierra Club Coastal Group leader Stacey Kronquest, above. "It took a citizen-initiated referendum—the first ever in Georgia—and the threat of a special election to get the attention of city leaders."

Last October, Club activists spearheaded a petition drive to put curbside recycling before the voters. More than 120 local businesses hosted the petition in their stores, and volunteers pounded the pavement to collect the necessary 8,300 registered voters' signatures. "The timing couldn't have been better," says Kronquest. "The petition drive straddled the November local elections, and challengers took incumbents to task for their lack of environmental leadership, forcing Savannah's mayor to confront the issue."

At first the mayor called the recycling movement "elitist," but activists countered with a PSA, and the mayor eventually conceded and promised a comprehensive recycling program by January 2009. "But it wasn't election-year promises we were after," Kronquest says. "We wanted curbside recycling put into policy, and if elected officials weren't going to do it, the people of Savannah were committed to making it happen."

A week shy of the petition deadline, with nearly 10,000 signatures in hand, Kronquest and fellow Coastal Group leaders Karen Grainey and Judy Jennings sat down with Savannah City Manager Michael Brown, who agreed to make curbside recycling law in exchange for dropping the petition. "Curbside recycling will now be a reality in Savannah," Kronquest says. "But perhaps the more important victory was the people of Savannah showing elected leaders that when it comes to good environmental policy, their voices will not be ignored."