Around the Block: February 2020
An important source of information for Zero Waste Melrose as it tries to present a more nuanced view of the current state of the recycling market is Resource Recycling magazine. From its editorial offices in Portland, Oregon, Resource Recycling provides the latest information on the management of secondary materials, or “recyclables,” including markets, pricing, and innovations in collection and re-processing. Resource Recycling also provides updates on municipal recycling programs around the North American continent—which are moving forward, which are suffering setbacks, and which are taking steps to work around various kinds of challenges that the markets and their vendors present. As Zero Waste Melrose is trying to convey, the news is not all bad.
Here is an update on various municipal and county programs around the United States, from the February 2020 issue of the magazine:
The city of Denver, Colorado, has indicated that it will implement a 10-cent fee on disposable paper and plastic bags that customers receive at retail stores, beginning in July of this year.
The municipality of Flora, Indiana, has begun offering drop-off recycling service after a previous recycling program had to shut down because of a facility fire.
Franklin County in Massachusetts is expected to see higher costs as a result of shifts in the recycling market, after years of receiving revenue from sales of commodity secondary materials.
The city of Newark, New Jersey, has rolled out the “Recycle Coach” app to help residents “recycle right”—i.e., learn which materials belong in their curbside recycling bins and which don’t.
The municipality of Newton, Kansas, is moving away from a mandatory recycling system and considering the implementation of a program that’s voluntary for its residents.
The city of Portland, Oregon, has exempted waste haulers from a business tax that they were previously required to pay, leading the city to then lower recycling charges for residents.
Santa Rosa County in Florida signed a new recycling services contract at the end of 2019 after the county’s previous provider of recycling services cancelled its contract earlier in the year.
Summit County in Colorado added a handful of drop-off recycling stations that accept glass.
Like Melrose, Swampscott has adopted the pink bag program
Swampscott, Massachusetts, rolled out a curbside textile program under a contract with Simple Recycling (Melrose launched a similar program through Simple Recycling in November 2019).
The city of Tacoma, Washington, began charging its residents a monthly surcharge to cover higher processing costs for recycling.
The city of Vancouver, British Columbia, has banned restaurants from serving food and drink in expanded polystyrene take-out containers and cups,
Resource Recycling also reported in its February 2020 issue that the state of California is in the midst of implementing a mandatory organics recycling program for all homes and businesses state-wide, with some exceptions rural and sparsely populated communities. Senate Bill 1383, which authorizes the program, was signed into law in 2016, but the regulations weren’t rolled out until January 2020. A principal goal of the program is to reduce the disposal of organic materials in solid waste landfills, where they break down and generate methane (CH4), a powerful greenhouse gas. Molecule for molecule, methane has 70 to 80 percent more heat-trapping capability than carbon dioxide (CO2), but it has lower residence time in the atmosphere, so its heat-trapping capability is more like 22 to 25 percent greater than that of CO2.
One more item from the February 2020 issue of Resource Recycling is worth particular attention. Many of the scary stories about the recycling market have left the public wondering whether the items that they’re putting out on the curb are actually being recycled, or are merely being dumped into landfills or sent to incinerators, because there are no or few end-user markets for recycled materials. But there are, and the magazine reported on efforts by two organizations to identify end users serving the Northeast markets. The Northeast Recycling Council (NERC) and the Northeast Waste Management Officials’ Association (NEWMOA) have recently collaborated in the compilation of a list of end-use options in the 11 states within their combined jurisdictions—Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
Through Google searches, other searches, and follow-up confirmation with vendors, NERC and NEWMOA compiled a list of 65 companies that make products from recycled paper and 49 companies that make products from recycled plastic. There is some glass-recycling capacity in the Northeast—notably in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and a little bit in Connecticut, but the region could use more, and hopefully more is on the way. Aluminum recycling capacity is very limited in the Northeast—the only identified makers of new products from recycled aluminum are in New York and Pennsylvania—but aluminum recycling is well-established.
So the upshot is, while we certainly need more capacity to make new products out of what we put on the curb, capacity does exist, and some of it exists not far from where we live, making life somewhat easier for Northeast cities and towns.
