One Man's Garbage is Another Man's Gold, Especially in Gloucester Township

A commercial featuring the smiling face of Mayor David Mayer runs ubiquitously on cable networks around South Jersey, even if you don't live in Gloucester Township.

Mayer is encouraging residents to participate in the township's new single-stream recycling program. It does away with the need to sort recycling items for separate pickup. He said increased participation in recycling saves the township money and saves the environment.

A win-win, right?

Not in Gloucester Township, where just about every municipal action is meant with an equal and opposite reaction of criticism.

It turns out Mayer's happy-face ads are paid for with state money paid to municipalities for the tonnage of recycling they generate.

Still a win-win, right? Again, not in Gloucester Township.

The township council approved a resolution last month to send a letter to Gov. Chris Christie to protest plans to stop or reduce the amount of money the state pays municipalities to produce tonnage of recycling. The council fears a change in the payments will have a negative effect on local recycling efforts and the township's bottom line.

In the meeting in which the resolution was unanimously passed on the all Democrat council, about a half-dozen people were scattered among the more than 200 seats in the room. Two of them got up to speak against the resolution.

"Anything that affects my taxes, I'm concerned with," said one man. "The mayor has these recycling commercials. You have an election for the mayor."

But Mayer argued this week he was doing the right thing.

"I was trying to save taxpayers money," he said of the ad. "We're saving over $350,000 per year and have increased recycling by 40 percent."

Christie has drawn similar criticism for a tourism commercial that's currently airing. He and his family appear in the ad encouraging people to visit the Jersey Shore that has largely recovered from Superstorm Sandy last year.

Both Christie and Mayer are on the ballot this fall running for re-election.