Recycling Horizons

When it comes to increased market development for recycled materials, those who coordinate municipal recycling efforts would like to see more information sharing, a greater demand for recycled products on the back end, and more collaboration between the product packaging industry and recyclers.

Ultimately, what each municipality decides to recycle depends on the marketability of that material as a recycled product.

In Milwaukee, WI, recyclables are collected by the municipality, and until recently the city had its own materials recovery facility (MRF).

“We’re in an interim period where we are using that facility only to transfer,” says Rick Meyers, the city’s resource recovery program manager. “We had dual-stream equipment there, and in fall of 2011 we switched to a single-sort program and in doing so started sending our material to a private MRF-in this case, Waste Management’s Germantown, WI, facility.”

After collecting the materials, Milwaukee either directly hauls to Waste Management or from some parts of the city takes the materials to the MRF building for later transfer.

The city’s contract allows for adding new materials.

“It’s a collaborative effort when materials are identified, and the market dynamics have changed,” Meyers says. “We look at what would be required in the sorting process and work together with them toward incorporating things that have sustainable markets.”

Case in point: the city has expanded from taking No. 1 and No. 2 plastic to taking No. 4 and No. 5, which includes tubs and lids.

“Those now have viable domestic markets, so we work together with them on the technical side and us on the public promotion side,” he says.

Princeton, NJ, and Mercer County recycle No. 1 and No. 2 plastics, bottles, cans, glass, aluminum, corrugated cardboard, newspaper, regular paper-“the across-the-board standard recyclables,” says Janet Pellichero, recycling coordinator for Princeton Township.

She adds that the township would consider adding No. 3 to No. 7 recyclables if a waste audit of Mercer County Improvement Authority-with which it operates its programs-demonstrates that it would be worth it as the township operates under its programs.

Pellichero brings up a point of concern: “We’ve gone back and forth to see how much is out there and if it’s worth it to collect it, and we’re also wondering what happens to it on the other end, since there don’t seem to be strong markets for the No. 3 to No. 7s.”

Mercer County has single-stream recycling. Everything that is collected is stored in a warehouse, then is shipped overseas or goes to a landfill.

“Most of them go to China or India, and we’re not sure what becomes of them there,” says Pellichero. “That’s our issue and that’s the global issue-what becomes of them? We don’t really know. There are a lot of questions of whether they can actually be recycled into anything else but fuel because of their high petroleum content, their oil content.

“You want to do the right thing. We have a lot of people here in Princeton Township who want to see us include more in that recycling container and increase our recycling rates by doing the No. 3 to No. 7s, but you do want to make sure they are actually being recycled, and by cleaning up our backyard we’re just not messing up somebody else’s.”

Paper products collected by Monongalia County in Morgantown, WV, is remilled and cans are sent to Alcoa to be remanufactured into new cans or to a Kentucky facility that makes aluminum gutters.

The county recycles a number of commodities: aluminum and steel cans, cardboard, mixed paper, No. 1 and No. 2 plastics, 55-gallon plastic or steel-drum containers, and industrial shrink wrap.

A dropoff site at the recycling plant is augmented by 10 satellite dropoff sites throughout the county.

Jessica Maple, executive director of Monongalia County Recycling, says a number of factors go into the decision as to what gets recycled. “We look at the outgoing end of it: can we get rid of it? The biggest decision-maker is if we can move it off of our property, because we’re sitting on only 1.3 acres,” she says.

“We also look at what is the bulk of what actually goes into our wastestream that we can pull out,” she adds. Another goal is to keep the hauling efforts as close as possible.

Cynthia G. Moore, recycling program coordinator for the Recycling and Solid Waste Section of the Bureau of Waste & Materials Management of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources agrees that a critical need in the industry is to expand networks for information exchange among the collectors, recyclers, reclaimers and manufacturers.

“We have just completed a comprehensive study of barriers and opportunities to increase plastics recycling, and heard loudly from all interviewed of the need for enhanced networking systems,” she says. “There is also the need for public and private sector investment-financial and policy-for new or upgraded technology to improve the efficiency and capacity of the collection and processing infrastructure.”

Moore’s bureau does not get directly involved in marketing of recyclable materials but supports and promotes market development.

“We provide financial support to the University of Wisconsin-Extension/Solid and Hazardous Waste Education Center (SHWEC) recycling markets directory and contracted with WasteCap Resources Inc. for development of a C&D markets directory,” Moore says. Both are accessible through the bureau’s website: http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/recycling/markets.html.

Boone, NC, recycles four commodities curbside: paper, plastic, glass, and aluminum.

While No. 1 and No. 2 plastics are recycled curbside, the rigid plastics are not. “The manufacturers or purchasers of this want it separated, and we only have so many slots on our trucks,” says recycling coordinator Marsha Story. “We don’t have enough to separate the rigid plastics from the No. 1s and No. 2s. We do have a rigid plastic drop site, but we do not pick those up at curbside.”

Boone also has drop sites for dry cell batteries, compact fluorescent bulbs, used motor oil, and filters.

“We have one unmanned recycling center in the center of town. Those are for our multifamily complexes that aren’t onboard for our curbside program,” Story says. “That has to be initiated by a landlord in order to get those containers on the site. So we do put something in place that’s convenient for our in-town, multifamily residents that are not participating in our curbside program and we’re about at 50% there.”

Boone contracts with a hauling company that collects and sells the commodities and charges the city for hauling services. The recycling services are financed through taxes.

In Tuscola County, MI, a company called ePaint in Battle Creek recycles latex paint into new colors and resells it for $10.

The county also recycles No. 1 and No. 2 bottles, most paper types, cardboard, tin and aluminum cans, waste oil, antifreeze, tires, clear glass bottles, batteries, No. 6 Styrofoam, and scrap metal.

The decision as to what to recycle is based on the ability of the Tuscola County Recycling Center to sell to the market, notes Mike Miller, recycling coordinator. The county seeks ways to do that through online research and reading recycling publications, he adds.

Tuscola County hosts a household waste cleanup event twice a year. After identifying ePaint as a market, the county accepted latex paint for the first time at its September event, taking in 620 gallons.

“We are always looking for ideas to help our citizens recycle, but due to our limited space it is not always possible,” says Miller. “We are looking at adding a few small trailers that can be dropped at our local schools to help with their needs.”

The Baltimore Department of Public Works picks up a number of materials curbside in accordance with what Waste Management accepts.

The department also collects Styrofoam, electronics, household hazardous waste, rigid plastics, tires, and scrap metal at the city’s dropoff centers. “Waste Management sells our material and we collect revenue after a processing fee is deducted,” notes Robert Murrow, the city’s recycling coordinator for the Bureau of Solid Waste.

Lenawee County in Michigan has a dropoff collection-recycling program for the benefit of its rural communities.

“The theory is that most of the larger communities could handle their own recycling, but the county had large areas where there probably wasn’t quite a big enough concentration of people to make this recycling really viable,” says Martin Marshall, county administrator.

“The county doesn’t have a desire to be in the recycling business. It’s something we identify as a need we planned to address,” Marshall says. “If there were effective recycling available to all of the residents of the county, I’m sure that the county would get out of that business. That has, to date, not been the case.”

While the rural recycling program has been ongoing for some time, it tends to be expensive for the amount of recycled material that gets captured, Marshall notes.

In the last 18 months, the county has focused its efforts on building a centralized recycling system with plans for four regional recycling centers in the four corners of the county to enhance recycling efforts.

The county is in discussions with some of the communities it services over issues such as cost-sharing for security and keeping the site clean if the county provides the equipment and hauling, Marshall says, adding that the communities appear to be open to that type of arrangement.

To date, the rural recycling program “has been a case of the hauler being contracted to provide the recycling opportunity, and then they take the stuff and sell it wherever they’re able to do that,” Marshall says.

The county is in the initial stages of identifying and developing markets for the recycled materials, such as is done in Ann Arbor, MI.

There is a program there-the ReUse Center-that’s an arm of Recycle Ann Arbor and offers a number of recycled items for sale to the public, such as building materials and household items. The items are donated, are tax-deductible, and the proceeds go back into the program and into recycling education.

At the Recycling Center of Ottumwa in Iowa, a number of items come in to the facility through curbside collection and dropoff, including corrugated cardboard, box board, magazines, catalogs, telephone directories, newspaper, office paper, tin cans, empty aerosol cans, plastic with a neck, glass bowls and jars, automotive batteries, tires, scrap metal, and appliances.

As with other operations, the choice of what to recycle depends on the availability of a market to “get rid of it,” notes Janice Bain, recycling coordinator. “I know there are some things that are recyclable like Styrofoam, but we don’t have the machinery to densify it and we really don’t have the population to collect 40,000 pounds of it,” she points out.

In identifying and developing markets for recyclable materials, Bain works with local brokers and reads trade journals to keep up with trends.

Ultimately, “a lot of it depends on our machinery, our facility, and our population base,” she adds.

Many items recycled at the center end up being “reborn” as the same type of item. Cedar Rapids is home to one of the world’s largest cardboard recycling plants at the International Paper-Cedar River Mill. There, old cardboard is turned into new cardboard.

“Sometimes our newspaper goes to an insulator and sometimes it goes to a pulp mill,” Bain says. “It depends on who wants these papers the most when we have a load leave here.”

Fair Lawn, NJ, recycles newspapers, magazines, junk mail, mixed office paper, cardboard, grass, leaves, branches, brush, tires, electronics, clothing and textiles, scrap metal, and rechargeable batteries.

Bottles, cans, plastic containers, and wax-coated cartons are recycled in a commingled collection.

Fair Lawn attempts to make it as easy as possible for residents to recycle by giving them disposal options, such as drop-off centers and curbside.

The decision on what to recycle is based on the availability of local markets and the involved costs versus revenues, says Recycling & Clean Communities Coordinator Ron Lotterman.

The Bergen County Utilities Authority keeps an extensive list of markets for a variety of materials.

“We use that list to send out RFP notices when contracts come due,” says Lotterman. “I also meet with other coordinators at meetings and we discuss new ideas and what markets are working for other towns.

Recycling efforts are in full swing, not only in municipalities but on college campuses as well.

The University of North Dakota is one of the country’s “greenest” schools, according to the 2011 edition of the Princeton Review’s Guide to 311 Green Colleges. Among the criteria for a favorable green rating is the school’s overall commitment to environmental issues.

Recycling is one component of that commitment. There are 75 sites throughout campus for recycling pickup and 32 sites dedicated to cardboard. The program has been in effect since 1991.

Materials recycled include glass, plastic, aluminum, tin, steel, paper, cardboard, batteries, fluorescent bulbs, ink cartridges. The materials are commingled and collected by Waste Management. What gets recycled on campus is determined by what Waste Management will collect, notes Debbie Merrill, recycling coordinator.

All types of batteries except the alkaline battery are sent to a nearby Batteries Plus location for recycling. Ink cartridges are picked up monthly from Laser Tek Services in Fargo, North Dakota.

The University of North Dakota has increased its metal recycling. In the 2011 to 2012 school year, the university recycled 84 tons of metal, including copper, steel, electrical wire, and different ballasts.

That scrap metal is sent to Residual Materials (RMI) for recycling.

The University of Virginia takes every available opportunity to divert as much as it can from the landfill, notes Sonny Beale, the university’s recycling program superintendent. The university collects for recycling all types of plastics from No. 1 through No. 7, steel cans, aluminum cans, cardboard, and paper, referred to as the “residential mix,” he notes. “We also collect and package for shipment cell phones, heavy metal batteries, the lithium-ions, and any electronic media, CDs, DVDs, their jewel cases, video and audio tapes, and their cases. We send them out to organizations that will take that material and produce something of like material,”
Beale says.

Paper, bottles and cans are placed into rolloff containers; plastics and metals are baled and placed into a 40-yard rolloff and transported by the university’s contractor, Sonoco Recycling, to be transformed into new materials. “We come up with the ideas of what it is we want to recycle and we contact them to see how well they meet our wants,” says Beale. “They’ve been a really good partner with being able to take all of the plastics and other material and have been able to repurpose or recycle it.

“A lot of the materials are turned into new-type materials, back into aluminum cans, paper into paper products or turned into cardboard. The materials that Sonoco generates as a packaging company are items that might be made of content from our products.”

Beale envisions a market where manufacturers and product producers create better opportunities for recycled materials by using them as packaging materials. “I know there are markets out there. Densifiers are available and they’re not too outrageously priced. It’s a matter of being able to identify the volume for a locality. If there are some synergies in getting that material out of landfills, collecting it and having it restructured or repurposed, then that is the ultimate opportunity.”

Beale says he believe most markets are struggling with the same supply and demand issue. “I think the educational piece that each of us can offer to our neighbor or co-worker is going to benefit the markets and keeping open minds to be able to find other opportunities for materials that we may not think could be recycled and still can be,” he points out.

While many communities throughout the United States have stepped up recycling efforts, some have had to pare them down or even eliminate them.

Case in point: Blair County in Pennsylvania. In September 2012, the Blair County Department of Solid Waste & Recycling was abolished due to lack of funding. That funding loss-coupled with a court challenge from the waste industry-resulted in Blair County closing its solid waste and recycling department and discontinuing many of its programs.

Dropoff recycling containers throughout the county were removed during September and October, with provisions remaining in place at the Buckhorn compost facility.

Those area residents and businesses committed to recycling must now rely on private recycling operations.

Many haulers offer recycling outside the communities where curbside recycling is required by state law in Altoona, Logan Township, Hollidaysburg Borough and Tyrone Borough. A list of hauling companies that recycle beyond the mandatory curbside communities is made available to residents.

The IRC COG also encourages businesses and residents to ask their local municipal officials to consider an ordinance to require both trash collection and curbside recycling, reasoning that since most haulers are already recycling, such a change in other municipalities would not be difficult or expensive.

But John Frederick, the IRC COG executive director, says he does not think that effort will fare “very well, even though it makes all the sense in the world, particularly in that part of the county which is urban and suburban.”

Of the 125,000 Blair County residents, about 90,000 of them are within a “very reasonable distance of each other,” Frederick notes. “The urban and suburbanized part is in and around Altoona and while I can see the more rural parts would be more challenging for curbside collection, those other places would be really well-suited for recycling at the curbside.”

Elsewhere in Centre County, PA, a half-dozen municipalities not required by state law nonetheless have a curbside collection, Frederick notes. “They just made the political, economic, and program decision that they’re going to do this and people want to do it,” he says.

“We’ve talked with municipal officials, and I’m optimistic that some things will happen. We do have several municipalities that are requiring their trash haulers to recycle if the residents wish to do so, but we still have four or five rather substantially sized municipalities that said they really don’t know that they’re interested.

“Our curbside program has continued to slowly and steadily improve, but we still have a long way to go,” he adds.

“We’re certainly going to miss the contributions that the county was able to make, because you really do need resources and people to turn the corner when it comes to program improvement.

“We’re hoping we’ll get some other municipalities to step up and make curbside collection a requirement, and we hope we’ll be able to make some adjustments and a different sort of focus that will recover a lot of those materials.”