Emma Wells

With a bachelor’s degree in biology from Berry College in Rome, Georgia, Emma Wells initially set her sights on becoming a dentist. However, a field botany class she took her senior year sparked a passion for environmental education.

After graduation, she took a role as a naturalist at the St. Christopher Camp & Conference Center, located off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. Wells later moved back to Rome, her hometown, and became affiliate director for the city’s Keep America Beautiful chapter, introducing her to various aspects of solid waste and recycling.

Today, Wells remains close to her roots, serving as director of solid waste for Floyd County, Georgia, since August 2021. Managing six remote drop-off sites throughout the county and a municipal material recovery facility (MRF), she says one of her main concerns is extending the life of the county’s landfill.

“I think we do a lot when we look at the other surrounding counties, but if you get closer to the metro Atlanta area, we’re just … a very small fish in a big pond,” Wells says. “But we’re doing what we can locally to deal with our waste and recycle that appropriately.”

In an interview with Waste Today, Wells discusses the importance of public works departments and the role municipalities play in promoting diversion.

"We’ve looked at other communities near us, they don’t service sites for nearly that amount of time. … But people want to be able to throw away their garbage when it’s convenient for them, so we try to make that possible.”

Waste Today (WT): What does your current role entail?

Emma Wells (EW): I have about 15 staff [members] at our remote sites, and those sites are open, some of them, seven days a week, 12 hours a day. So, we are constantly accepting garbage and recycling. … A big challenge is just staffing, keeping people at the sites when they need to be managing those long hours.

We’ve looked at other communities near us, they don’t service sites for nearly that amount of time. … But people want to be able to throw away their garbage when it’s convenient for them, so we try to make that possible.

[At] our facility here at the recycling center—that’s where my office is—we have a team of six people, and five of those are corrections officers, so we use inmate labor to sort our recycling.

Our community voted on a SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) project, and we are set to get a pretty significant investment in some technology upgrades. We’re also getting a grant from Georgia EPD (Environmental Protection Division) to install a hogger, as they call it. It’s a particle-cut shredder that will allow us to shred books and plastic bottles.

WT: What are some of the challenges of managing solid waste in a more rural area?

EW: In a rural area, we are dependent on our public works department. So, solid waste encompasses our remote sites as well as our recycling center, but we have to work together with other county and city departments to make things come together. I think in a rural area, especially, you’re dealing with a lot of people who … will hold on to their trash for weeks, it seems like, and you’re having to deal with the traffic that comes along with that. And educating the public, which is always a delicate thing to do, on where you can take things.

In general, we all face the same challenges, no matter where we are. We might be a bit further from a landfill than people in different areas, but at the same time, it probably takes the same amount of time because we’re not dealing with traffic. ... The challenges are probably the same across the board.