Storyline · 1986–1994
Recycling at UNC began with a student pilot in 1986, and curbside pickup began in Chapel Hill and Carrboro in 1988. From 1989 UNC had a recycling office and the county program grew to apartments, drop-off sites, plastics and magazines, though mixed-paper collections stopped twice for lack of a market. The program and UNC's office both won state awards, and Chapel Hill tried weekly pickup from roll-out carts. In 1993 curbside pickup added cans and plastic jugs and UNC began paying departments to buy recycled paper, and by 1994 the county took cardboard at every drop-off site, though a glutted market stopped unmixed paper at University Mall.
In October 1986 the Student Environmental Action Coalition, a Campus Y group, began collecting glass, aluminum and newspapers in Henderson Residence College, a pilot that grew into the Tarheel Aluminum Recycling Program with Carolina-blue bins across campus. After a newspaper-only pilot in October 1988, the Chapel Hill Public Works Department began weekly curbside collection of newspaper, glass and aluminum on November 9 in parts of Chapel Hill and on November 10 in Carrboro, paid for from Orange County Landfill funds to cut the waste sent to the landfill. About a third of the 1,850 households asked took part the first week.
In January 1989 UNC named Phil Prete its recycling director; the physical plant director later said the University had been the first state agency to create such a post. Prete put the University's share of the landfill at 22 percent of the waste the year before, much of it paper and ash from the Cameron Avenue power plant, and Chapel Hill solid waste planner Blair Pollock said the landfill was to close in 1997. In early 1989 the towns, groups and the University recycled 660 tons, about 2 percent of the landfill's waste. By October an expanded curbside program for Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough drew 60 percent of homes in its first three days. Prete left on December 8; University waste sent to the landfill had fallen from more than 1,200 tons in March to just over 600 tons in October.
In February 1990 about 25 tons of paper came from 850 to 900 bins in campus offices, and by September the physical plant had added six programs, among them drop-off barrels at 10 sites and cardboard pickup at loading docks, raising campus recycling from 21 to nearly 35 tons a month. On February 10 the county added glass, newspaper and aluminum recycling to three drop-off sites in Bingham Township. By June the town and the Boy Scout recycling center off Municipal Drive stopped taking mixed paper when their Durham buyer quit buying it, and weekend collections that began in September at Carrboro Plaza, University Mall and the Hillsborough Wal-Mart took in about 55 tons in ten weekends before recycling coordinator Wendy McGee stopped them in November until the market improved. On October 3 the Orange Regional Recycling Program began serving apartment complexes in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and on December 1 the county program began taking plastic soda bottles and milk and water jugs. On November 26 the Chapel Hill Town Council voted 5 to 4 to design a pilot of weekly curbside garbage pickup from roll-out carts in place of twice-a-week backyard pickup; Town Manager Cal Horton said it could save about $150,000 a year for recycling, and Mayor Jonathan Howes, Nancy Preston, Julie Andresen and Jimmy Wallace voted no.
By late January 1991 UNC's Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling had set up its first permanent recycling stations, at three residence halls and near Lineberger Hall, and was collecting more than 50 tons a month. A study found that 2,730 tons were recycled in the county from July through December 1990, up 16 percent from a year earlier, and that more than 17 percent of household trash was still recyclable. In March the North Carolina Recycling Association named the Orange Regional Recycling Program, run by Chapel Hill for the whole county, its outstanding recycling program. On March 25 Chancellor Paul Hardin adopted a University waste reduction and recycling policy to meet a 1989 state law calling for a 25 percent cut in solid waste by 1993; town recycling officials doubted it would work without money and effort behind it. A compost demonstration site opened at Grey Culbreth Junior High School on April 20. In September Chapel Hill began its cart pilot for 585 homes in five neighborhoods, and in February 1992 solid waste administrator Gayle Wilson told the council it could save more than $400,000 a year townwide.
In 1992 the regional program began taking magazines and catalogs at its drop-off sites on January 18, and on March 23 it began a nine-month trial of curbside plastic bottle pickup from 4,000 Chapel Hill and Carrboro households, which McGee called the first curbside plastics pickup. By late March UNC's recycling office had won a state merit award for waste reduction and recycling education; the campus had recycled 772 tons the year before. On May 27 the Landfill Owners' Group approved a $128,000 increase in recycling spending, paid for by a 50-cent rise in the landfill tipping fee, including carts at more than 30 fraternity and sorority houses. UNC Hospitals began a program in June to cut its waste by 40 percent, and that August UNC put recycling bins in every residence hall room. On December 1, because its contractor could sell only milk jugs and soda bottles, the county program stopped taking other plastics at its drop-off sites; it had recycled 9,427 tons, about 7.2 percent of the county's waste, in 1991-92.
On February 1, 1993 curbside pickup in Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough added plastic soda bottles, aluminum cans and plastic jugs to the newspapers and glass already collected, adding 36 cents per household for a total near $1.54, and Browning-Ferris Industries added a truck. That April the landfill and the Orange Community Recycling Program offered $10,000 in grants for waste-reduction and recycling projects, and the program began giving out free kits of postcards to stop junk mail, which it said made up half of the office paper it collected. In August a $4,900 state grant paid for public recycling bins on busy streets, downtowns and shopping centers in the three towns. In September, with the market for recycled paper glutted, the program stopped taking unmixed paper such as phone books, junk mail and office paper at its University Mall site, and UNC, under Gov. Jim Hunt's April executive order on state waste, began paying the difference so that departments could buy recycled paper at the price of virgin paper. In February 1994 the program put bins for flattened corrugated cardboard at all of its drop-off sites.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows them all.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.
People with a page of their own whom the dated events above name, those named most often first.
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are about the sites and people its dated events name, those named most often first, so they may discuss the storyline only in part. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
Albert Coates's personal narrative of his stay in North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill after a stroke, published by the University of North Carolina in 1968. Topics include cerebrovascular disease patients and their rehabilitation, hospital care in Chapel Hill and Coates himself, the founder of the university's Institute of Government. 30 pages; also titled What the NC Memorial Hospital Meant to Me.
Illustrated look back at fifty years of North Carolina Memorial Hospital and the UNC School of Medicine, with stories by Dick Broom edited by Lynn Wooten. Published by the Medical Foundation of N.C. in 2002, 93 pages with color illustrations and portraits.
A 19-page audit report issued in Raleigh in January 1998 by a North Carolina state office, reviewing the electronic data processing controls of the payroll and patient accounting systems at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill. Subjects include evaluation of the hospitals and of electronic data processing departments in Chapel Hill. A slim government document for those tracking the hospital's administration in the 1990s.
Anecdotes from the University of North Carolina Hospitals in Chapel Hill, gathered in an unpaged illustrated volume whose colophon is dated September 1993. The pieces are short recollections of care given and received. Issued by the hospitals, 22 cm.
Elisha Mitchell, the University of North Carolina professor for whom Mount Mitchell is named, as botanist and as observer of early Chapel Hill, in a study by Rogers McVaugh, Michael R. McVaugh and Mary Ayers. It covers Mitchell's botanical knowledge, the plants of Chapel Hill and the town's historical geography. Published by the Botanical Garden Foundation in Chapel Hill in 1996, 122 pages with illustrations and maps.
Architectural and historical inventory of Carrboro by Claudia Roberts Brown, published in 1983 by the Carrboro Appearance Commission and the town. The 48-page survey, with illustrations and maps, documents the town's historic buildings and their conservation.
Collected first-hand and second-hand stories from the Eno River valley as told from the standpoint of African Americans and Native people who have lived along the river in Orange and Durham counties, from prehistory to the present day. Issued by the Eno River Association in Durham as volume 10, number 2 of the Eno Journal, 2021, 106 pages with illustrations.
Emily Eidenier Pearce's history of Rogers Road, the historically African American neighborhood on the edge of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and of what happened to it after Orange County opened its landfill next door in 1972. Drawing on interviews with residents, the book records the neighborhood's origins, family life, churches and customs, and then the environmental and social burdens of decades beside the landfill. Privately issued in 2009, 298 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
David Cook collects the grim side of the Eno River's past in Orange and Durham counties: ghost stories, crimes, train wrecks and accidents, including the hanging of rebels near the river in 1771, a sawmill accident said to have started a run of hauntings, and a dance one Valentine's Day that ended badly. Published by The History Press in 2025, 141 pages with illustrations.
Stewart E. Dunaway's history of the two mills George Johnston built on New Hope Creek in Orange County, the first in 1793 and the second in 1820, the earlier of which he sold to the Englishman William Robson. Self-published in 2010, 256 pages with illustrations, maps and facsimiles. Topics include gristmills in Orange County and the Blackwood, Johnston, Robinson and Robson families, so the volume serves both mill history and genealogy.
Address by Bishop Joseph Blount Cheshire at St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough on 24 August 1924, marking the parish's hundredth anniversary. Printed in Durham in 1925 at the vestry's order, with a foreword by the rector. Cheshire discusses George Micklejohn, William Mercer Green and Moses Ashley Curtis.
Stewart E. Dunaway's 2010 study of Patterson Mill, a gristmill site on New Hope Creek where Orange County meets Chatham County. The book pairs a short genealogy of the Patterson family with a close survey of what remains of the mill on land now inside Duke Forest, supported by maps, facsimile documents and illustrations across 176 pages. Self-published in a second issue dated October 10, 2010.
Departmental history of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill covering its first fifty years, published by the department in 2000. The history covers medical schools, medical education and the teaching of obstetrics in North Carolina. First edition, xvii and 366 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Albert N. Link's early history of Research Triangle Park, published in 1995 by the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina. Topics include research parks, research institutes and industrial research in the state, with the park's own history at the center. 149 pages with illustrations and maps.
Michael McIntyre's 23-minute documentary video on the Eno River and Eno River State Park, produced in Durham in 1993 with support from the Duke University Institute of the Arts. It covers the river's past, its geology and the effort to preserve it, including the Indigenous peoples of the Eno River region. The container credits it with the 1993 Hal Kammerer Film and Video Award at Duke. VHS videocassette, color with sound.
Mary Claire Engstrom's history of the Quaker settlers of the Eno River valley from about 1750 to 1847, in the country that is now Orange and Durham counties. Published by the Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley in Durham in 1989, 73 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
Each dated event above names its source, the place to start. For finding more on an event across newspapers, records and histories, see the research guide Follow an event across several accounts. Ask at the North Carolina Room of the Orange County Public Library for help with local sources.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library. “Recycling in Orange County and at UNC, 1986–1994.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/recycling-storyline-1986/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
