Photo by Becky Polaski

Weedville native Bekki Titchner steers Elk County Recycling/Solid Waste towards success.

By Becky Polaski
Staff Writer

Bekki Titchner has been employed as the Elk County Recycling/Solid Waste Coordinator for the past 10 years, and during that time she has worked diligently to ensure that county residents have the means to recycle a variety of items that would otherwise clutter up the landfill.
A native of Weedville, Titchner attended St. Marys Area High School, graduating in 1978. She then went on to attend Allegheny College in Meadville, where she majored in environmental science and also earned a minor in writing. After earning her degree, Titchner returned to Elk County and worked for two of the local newspapers.
“After college I did a lot of things, but the most was working at The Ridgway Record and The Daily Press for about a dozen years,” Titchner said. “I really enjoyed that. I really enjoyed working for the newspaper and being connected to the community, but I did have a big focus on environmental issues.”
Titchner was also good friends with Kristine Anderson, who was Elk County’s original Recycling Coordinator.
“She got sick and she died of cancer in July of 1999 and at that time I tried to decide whether I wanted a career change,” Titchner said. “It seemed like maybe something that would be good for me, so I gave it a shot and here I am.”
Working off of what Anderson had started, Titchner has helped the county’s recycling program expand over the years. Since she has been coordinator, the program as grown to include medicine collections, electronics collections, plastics collections and HHW collections.
“We kept all of the programs intact that Kris and the board had started such as the drop-off program, white goods recycling, and tire recycling, and then we just added to that as things changed over the years,” Titchner said. “Electronics became an issue. The idea of medicines going into the waterways became an issue.”
Additionally, Titchner was involved in starting CleanWays in 2000 and cleaning up several illegal dump sites over the past 10 years.
Titchner also started the county’s collection of fluorescent lamps, compact fluorescent bulbs, and household batteries. All of these items can be dropped off during the monthly electronics collection, which is held on the third Saturday of each month at the Stackpole Complex in St. Marys.
“We take all household batteries, as well as all types of fluorescent lamps. A lot of people are going to the CFLs,” Titchner said. “We have a drop off and it is free.”
All of the county’s recycling programs are free to county residents, though donations are often requested to help offset costs. Titchner noted that, in particular, the amount of donations received each month at the plastics collection is enough to pay for that program.
“People are keeping it viable for us,” Titchner said. “We are also one of two or three counties in the whole state that offer free electronics recycling. It is not unusual for people to pay upwards of $25 to recycle a console TV or $20 for a computer system.”
Another recycling program Titchner is currently working on is an oil-based paint collection. She has been discussing the matter with members of the Elk County Solid Waste Authority and hopes to have a regular collection available for county residents by the end of the year.
The one downside Titchner noted about the job is that there is no instant gratification.
“You have to jump through so many hoops,” Titchner said. “We started working on the medicine collection in 2007 and it took us a whole year to actually get approval to get it done.”
In addition to the time it takes to get approval a new recycling project, funding is also sometimes a problem.
“Fortunately we have a small county, so it doesn’t cost a fortune to do these programs, although they are quite expensive,” Titchner said. “We’re still about to do it and do it within reason and have this opportunity for our residents.”
The current state of the economy has led to even more cutbacks in the amount of funding that was once available for recycling programs, and looking toward the future Titchner noted that this could lead to several changes taking place, particularly with regard to the county’s drop-off program.
“The biggest problem is the funding issue because we’ve lost so much of it,” Titchner said. “We’re trying to decide whether we should change the drop-off program next year when the contract expires and we have to rebid the service. I know that a at least some of the board really feels that the direction we should take is these types of special collections for hard to recycle items. I’m not certain where we’ll go. Funding, though, is one of the only issues we have.”
Along with funding, volunteers are always needed to help with the county’s programs. Individuals interested in volunteering can contact the Elk County Recycling Office at 776-5373. Titchner added that area youth can earn service hours for the time they spend volunteering each month.
Titchner concluded that it is the support of the community that has led to the success of the county’s recycling programs.
“We’ve done a lot of good things,” Titchner said. “It is only because we have help. The board has been really responsive. The office staff is great. So it is just a win-win situation and people support it. Without that, it wouldn’t work. People have to support it.”