Hundreds of pounds of unused dog tags bring $400 to Fayette treasurer’s office
A little spring cleaning in a Fayette County row office yielded a big find.
Treasurer Melissa Tzan found a whopping 800 pounds of aluminum dog license tags – enough to fill up three large recycling cans – in the office.
“We were all kind of shocked,” Tzan said. “We just didn’t realize how much was there.”
The county ended up with so many because previous treasurers (the county office responsible for handling dog licenses) ordered 10,000 tags yearly from the state. Only about half of the order would be used, and because the tags are stamped with the year, they couldn’t be carried over into the next year, she said.
“There were these old dogs tags going back to 1989,” Tzan said, noting the tags were supplied to the county at no cost.
Tzan reached out to Sheila Shea, director of the county’s recycling center, and found that at 50 cents per pound, recycling the tags would net a little over $400 for the treasurer’s office. It was an undertaking Shea, who has spearheaded efforts to make recycling more convenient and accessible in the county, said she was glad to be a part of.
“Aluminum is considered a sustainable metal (and) it can be recycled over and over,” Shea said. “An aluminum can is generally turned into a new can and back on shelves within 60 days. Recycling one aluminum can is enough to power a television for three hours.”
She encouraged residents to take a look around their own homes and see what can be recycled instead of thrown away, noting that in addition to the recycling center in Uniontown, there are 34 recycling drop-off bins through the county.
Tzan, meanwhile, said she’ll order fewer dog tags moving forward, noting a further decline in requests for them since dog owners can now purchase lifetime licenses for their dogs instead of renewing them yearly.
As for the $400, she said that money will be used to make a necessary purchase for the office.
“It’s one of the many thing we’re looking at to help save money,” Tzan said, adding she plans on continuing recycling other items in the office that were either over-ordered or never used.
According to the state Department of Agriculture, all dogs 3 months and older must be licensed. The yearly fee is $8.50 or a lifetime license cost of $51.50. For dogs that are spayed or neutered, the cost yearly is $6.50 or $31.50 for a lifetime license.