front&center: Debbie Plopper

Conway’s recycling queen talks trash

By Tammy Keith

LITTLE ROCK — Debbie Plopper of Conway was green when green wasn’t cool.

Plopper, special projects coordinator for the city’s recycling program, is passionate about the subject, but not obnoxious.

“I’m not perfect by any means,” she said, having apologized twice to visitors for having the air conditioning in her home set below its normal 80 degrees during the interview.

But she had been working in her yard, and, well, visitors were coming.

Plopper, 57, grew up in California, but she wasn’t a hippie and never thought about recycling then. She did appreciate the beauty of Santa Monica Beach and the Redwoods.

“I think it’s probably every two decades it [the environment] seems to be hot again. In 1990, it was a fairly hot issue,” she said.

Most people in Conway who drag their blue carts to the curb on recycling day likely have no idea that it was Plopper who helped start the city’s recycling efforts in 1990.

She and her husband, Bruce, moved to Conway in 1985, and she got some friends together to start a women’s center. They did surveys and found out health care was the No. 1 issue, so they were going to address that, “which was hysterical, because none of us had a health background,” she said with a laugh.

During an Earth Day event sponsored by the Girl Scouts and Hendrix College, Plopper and her friendswere working on the women’s center project.

To tie into the Earth Day event, Plopper did research and put out a signup list for those interested in recycling.

That day was what Oprah would call Plopper’s “Aha” moment.

She found in doing some research for the event that it took 250,000 trees to put out a Sunday edition of the New York Times.

“That’s when I said, ‘What are we doing? We do all this stuff and just bury it. This is nuts,’” she recalled.

When Plopper called around for information about the city’s recycling program, she found out there wasn’t anything.

First United Methodist Church had been recycling, but because there was no market for the materials, it stopped.

Plopper met Ginny Copper, who had been involved at the church, and it was a match made in heaven, Plopper said. “You know when you find the right person to team with? It just clicked.”

Others joined in the effort, and Community Recycling Committee, as it was called, started holding recycling drives in a parking lot.

The first drive collected 22,000 pounds of newspapers, magazines and cans.

The group joined with Kroger and moved the drives there.

She recalled having her son, John, just a toddler at the time, sitting in his little chair eating breakfast in the Kroger parking lot as she and about 60 volunteers collected recyclables.

Thanks to her efforts, Plopper got the nickname, “The Trash Lady.”

The Conway Morning Rotary Club got involved, volunteering at the drives. “They were a godsend,” she said.

“We built on what First Methodist had started. It’s all a building block,” she said. “I keep saying I was at theright place at the right time.”

The Conway Area Chamber of Commerce honored her with the Good Neighbor Award for her work. “I was just shocked,” she said.

The Arkansas Recycling Coalition honored the original recycling committee, and the group a couple of years ago named Plopper Recycler of the Year.

One of her “biggest mentors” was Don Curran, who works at Virco Manufacturing Corp. “He is a very generous soul,” she said. “He is the one who has gotten Virco as involved as they are” with recycling, she said, adding Virco has won national awards for its efforts.

The Conway City Council was approached, and in 1994 a bond issue was passed to build the Material Recovery Facility, a sorting and storage facility for recyclables the city collects each week.

It was all volunteer work until 1995, when a recycling coordinator was hired and Plopper was hired as the special projects coordinator, which is a part-time job.

Frustrations arose along the way. Conway was booming, and few employees were available to handle the recycling. Sometimes businesses would finally agree to recycle, only to have it not be picked up, for example.

Instead of curbside pickup, drop-off points were established for subdivisions. Blue, plastic bags were used initially, and now automated trucks pick up 65-gallon blue recycling carts.

“I hear too many people say, ‘I can’t make a difference.’ Last year we did 22 million pounds of recycling in Conway. Most of that came from individuals. It came from them putting one thing at a time in there (thecart),” she said.

The carts are free, and Plopper said if everyone in Conway wants one, they can have one. She touts the Web site, www.conwaysanitation.com, through which the carts can be ordered and other information gleaned.

She doesn’t believe in mandatory recycling, though. “I think education is the better way to go,” she said.

Plopper has been involved in school projects and praised Diane Henson and other Conway health teachers for participating.

Plopper doesn’t like scare tactics, either. “I do my best never to use the phrase ‘Save the Earth.’ It’s so dramatic. I’m not a gloom-and-doom person. Just take personal responsibility, whether it’s pet responsibility or what you do with your waste.”

Plopper’s other passion is the Conway Animal Shelter, and she actually started because she felt sorry for the people who ran it.

“I’ve always like horses. We always had pets growing up ... I started working with Friends of the Conway Animal Shelter more out of empathy for the people who work there.” She serves as a member of the board.

The Conway Animal Shelter is on landfill property, which made her more aware of it.

She saw directors come and go, and there were only three staff members. She heard people“who should know better” refer to a director as “a dog killer.”

“It broke my heart to see that,” she said.

“I got involved because I wanted to help with the education and the image,” she said.

The animal shelter deals with 2,500 animals a year, she said, adding that the shelter’s adoption rate is better than the national average.

“This is a very caring group. What they are dealing with is people’s pet irresponsibility,” she said, by not getting pets spayed and neutered, or just dumping them.

One of the bigger fundraisers Plopper is involved with is the Chase Race and Paws, named for the late Chase Potter, a son of Don and the late Cheryl Potter. It involves runners, walkers and their pets.

It just so happened, Plopper said, that Chase was “a big dog lover, an animal lover,” so some of the proceeds go to the animal shelter.

At those events, she makes sure there is a place for recycling.

She won’t pester her friends about recycling, she said, but don’t ask her to participate in an event where recycling isn’t available. It would just be hypocritical, she said.

When the 400 city employees had their Christmas party last year, Plopper used her own money to plan a “waste-free meal,” which included products that could be recycled or composted.

“We had max, max, three bags of waste from 400-plus people. We had about 20 bags of compostables and recyclables,” she said.

Even though the city has come a long way in recycling, thanks to the efforts of many people, Plopper insists (many of her sentences start with, “I can’t say enough about ....) she has plenty of goals.

These goals include getting an effective recycling project started at apartment complexes in Conway; more recycling bins in parks; a networking list compiled for another group with which she’s involved, the Faulkner County Supporters of Sustainable Communities; more churches and businesses taking part in recycling; finishing some videos on recycling that she says are “quirky,” not boring; the list goes on.

But for now, the visitors are leaving, and it’s time to turn the thermostat back to 80.

matter of fact Occupation: Special projects coordinator for Conway’s recycling program Former job: Bank teller and training director for 30 branches of the Lincoln Savings and Loan in southern California Family: Husband, Bruce; son, John;

daughter, Kelley I collect: I love gnomes! I have gnome wallpaper in the pantry area.

People would be surprised to know: I’m a twin - we’re third-generation twins. (Her twin sister, Dottie, lives on a boat in the Caribbean) Favorite music: We are making our own CDs of our music. I like a wide variety. I like upbeat - I like Irish jigs. I just like uplifting ones.

Best recycling tip: Make it easy on yourself - some people tend to make it hard. Educate yourself. There’s so much out there.

The world would be a better place if: People were nice to each other.

My vanity plate says: HugSum1, and my husband’s is BeCivil. We used to have AvoidTV, but when my son started driving, he said, “A teenager cannot drive around with that.”

River Valley Ozark, Pages 134, 135 on 07/20/2008