Environmental Advisory Committee

The Town of Oak Island has a history of being proactive regarding the recycling industry, not only by providing curbside recycling for its residents, but also by pursuing grant opportunities to enhance our recycling program. Recycling reduces waste in our local landfill while conserving our natural resources. Oak Island residents and guests recycled over 2,632 tons of material last year.

With a robust recycling program comes the potential for increased contamination. Contamination not only reduces the value of recycled material; it can damage expensive equipment and can pose risks for staff at recycling facilities. The increased costs often result in increased fees passed on to local governments and residents. Knowing what can and cannot go into the recycling bin is vital to maintaining Oak Island’s recycling program and aiding North Carolina’s thriving recycling industry.

In summer 2021, Oak Island was selected as a recipient of the USDA Strengthening Recycling in Small Communities grant. Magnets with up-to-date recycling information were mailed to all residents. In Spring 2022, the Town was awarded the Carton Council Community Education grant used to purchase more material.

To help make recycling more efficient, remember these simple tips:

• Place empty cans, bottles, paper and cardboard in the recycling bin (keep everything else out).
• Do not bag your recyclable items.
• Do not put plastic bags, cords, hoses and other string-like items in the recycling bin as they can tangle around rotating equipment.
• Avoid putting other things that could be hazardous to workers who sort recycling – like batteries, needles, sharp objects and food residue – into the recycling bin.
• Do not put Styrofoam cups and containers in the recycling bin.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

CLICK HERE to watch the latest Program Overview from GFL Environmental 

For more information, check out the following videos:

• CLICK HERE to watch the Virtual Recycling Plant Tour from the City of Raleigh
• CLICK HERE to watch the Carton Recycling Tutorial from the Carton Council 

Click the "Recycle Right" graphic below to learn more:

"WHEN IN DOUBT, THROW IT OUT!"

For more information on recycling education efforts, please contact the EAC member below: 

• Sue Davidson
• Margaret Johnson

CLICK HERE to view the Town of Oak Island Recycling Information & Collection Schedule

Tree City USA was created in 1972 by the Arbor Day Foundation, as a designation to recognize communities across the country who are taking steps towards effective management of their public trees.

The Public Works Department performs the vegetation maintenance and all criteria work associated with the Tree City USA designation for the Town of Oak Island.

For more information on this designation or the work done to achieve and maintain it, visit the Public Works page at OakIslandNC.gov/PW or click the link below.

The SMART YARD Program

The Smart Yard program is designed to assist property owners with voluntarily managing stormwater on their own home site.

This benefits all the Town citizenry by reducing stormwater that may flow into our streets and carry pollutants from fertilizers, pesticides, and weed killer applications that eventually end up in our coastal waterways that result in water pollution (Our nearby creeks and waterways are closed for shellfish harvesting and swimming due to health and safety risks).

To a great extent, the volunteer Smart Yard program supports the worthy goals of the Storm Water Division of the Town’s Public Works Department in preserving our fragile ecosystem. But it extends those goals by involving individual property owners in this process.

The program offers other important benefits to participants: advice on how to create attractive landscaping while managing stormwater, suggestions on how and where a “rain garden” may be a new landscape feature, how a ‘rain barrel’ can be used to water vegetable and flower gardens, how gutter/downspout diverters can help disperse stormwater, how planting ‘native plants and trees can reduce watering needs and survivability during drought or intense storm conditions, and other environmental enhancements. Most frequently, the measures suggested are simple (often with minimal skills required by property owners to “do it yourself”) and with modest costs.

The Smart Yard program is detailed in its various elements with photos and diagrams in accompanying pages of the Smart Yard brochure distributed by the NC Coastal Federation. 

For more information on the Smart Yard program, CLICK HERE or on the brochure cover page below, or email the following EAC members:

• Margaret Johnson

Example of a SMART YARD award recipient:

The Town of Oak Island approved on October 16, 2022 and supports fully the initiative to eliminate voluntarily the usage of single use plastic straws.  The Town’s Environmental Advisory Committee (EAC) put together a program, and the associated tools and information for businesses and citizens to accomplish the Town’s plastic straws initiative. Basically, the single use plastic straw initiative encourages the general public to not ask for a single use straw and for businesses not to provide straws, and if supplied, then only upon request.

There are several environmental negatives -pollution- associated with plastic straws once they are used by consumers. Plastic straws are not biodegradable, cannot be recycled effectively, and do release toxins and chemicals that pollute our waterways and soil.  The released toxins and chemicals from the plastic straws can be ingested by wildlife in the environments surrounding our island. These toxins and chemicals then can be ingested by humans. The Town of Oak Island is dedicated to breaking the plastic straw cycle of pollution.

How Can You Help

Here are a number of resources to inform citizens on how they can implement the Skip the Straw initiative in their businesses:

• Voluntary Single Use Straw Elimination Pledge
• 10 Reasons to Skip The Straw Poster
• EAC Presentation on eliminating Single Use Plastic Straws

For more information regarding the Skip the Plastic Straw initiative, contact the following EAC members:

• Lee Maxwell
• Margaret Johnson

What Is a Living Shoreline?

North Carolina’s salt marshes and oyster reefs are critical habitats for many fish and bird species. They protect our coasts by trapping sediments and filtering nutrients and pollutants from runoff that would otherwise greatly decrease coastal water quality. These habitats can gain elevation over time, thanks to the sediments they trap, so preserving them is key to protecting upland properties into the future.   North Carolina’s coastlines are threatened by erosion due in part to rising sea levels, concentrated energy from boat wakes, more extreme storms, and poor coastal planning. Commonly used erosion control structures, like bulkheads, can increase erosion of salt marshes due to waves reflecting off the structures and scouring sediment away from the base of the walls, thereby destroying marsh and oyster habitat. Additionally, hardened structures can lead to increased erosion on neighboring properties. 

Living shorelines are an alternative to traditional hardened coastal defenses that enhance coastal habitats while protecting property from erosion. There are many forms depending on anticipated wave energy, ranging from well planted, properly graded banks, to oyster bag sills or concrete structures where new oysters will grow, combined with marsh grass plantings near the shore. Once established, living shorelines have been shown to outperform bulkheads during hurricanes and are less expensive to repair, though some routine maintenance is needed.

EAC Role

Oak Island and the North Carolina Coastal Federation installed a living shoreline at Veterans Park (1408 E Yacht Drive, Oak Island, NC) in 2013 to help address shoreline erosion in the park and water quality issues in the Lockwoods Folly River Basin. In March of 2023, the Veterans Park living shore was adopted by Oak Island’s Environmental Advisory Committee (EAC). The EAC assists in organizing community volunteers to help maintain the living shoreline and pick up trash from the wetland sections of the park in order to keep unsightly and harmful plastic and other trash out of our local waterways. At the first clean-up event, held on March 17, 2023, three (3) staff members and seven (7) volunteers from the North Carolina Coastal Federation (NCCF) taught nine (9) Oak Islander Volunteers how to maintain living shorelines. They placed 40 new bags of marine limestone to stabilize the oyster sill and picked up 418 pounds of trash and marine debris from the marsh!   

The EAC will be organizing living shoreline and maintenance events throughout the year. If you are interested, we would love to hear from you.

Click the links below for more information on Living Shoreline projects:

• Oak Island Living Shoreline Projects Photo Gallery
• North Carolina Coastal Federation: Living Shorelines
• PBS News Hour segment on Living Shorelines

For more information on the Living Shoreline Project,CLICK HERE to contact the EAC Members.