DEP offers a chart of municipal recycling rates that's eye-opening: Recycling Rates By Municipality
The recycling rate for Nantucket is impressive - they mandate that household waste be disposed of in clear plastic bags, among other things.
The FACTS
Incineration is not a solution, unless special interests monopolize the discussion.
Recently, a friend commented that each time he/she was at the landfill, the large roll off containers filled with 'recycling' are being carried to the top of the landfill mountain and dumped in the landfill by Waste Management.
The comment was sent to the Middleboro Board of Selectmen to obtain an answer for my friend and was met with silence.
In how many other communities is this happening? How many residents recycle nothing and no action is taken?
State aims to reduce landfill waste by 80 percent
A large machine with steel wheels gets ready to bury trash at the Taunton landfill in 2005.
BOSTON —
A state plan to reduce trash dumped in landfills would step up local recycling, keep banned materials out of the waste stream and possibly end a moratorium on new trash incinerators.
This spring, state environmental officials hope to wrap up the plan, almost three years in the making, to cut the trash dumped in landfills nearly a third by the end of the decade and an ambitious 80 percent by 2050.
Most controversially, the plan would relax a longtime moratorium on new trash incinerators and require some commercial food waste to be diverted from landfills next year.
It also aims to step up recycling by businesses and residents at the local level and ensure that fewer toxic materials and other banned materials end up in the waste stream.
Overall, the plan, called, “Pathway to Zero Waste,” is meant to cut greenhouse gas emissions from trash disposal and processing and ease pressure on the state’s landfills.
“As a whole, we’re reiterating our strong support for recycling and reuse,” said state Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Kenneth Kimmell.
The state proposal has been a long time coming. The state recycled about 42 percent of all its waste as of 2009 – one of the highest rates in the nation, but one that did not improve over the last decade, the plan says.
The draft plan would change a 23-year-old ban on expanding municipal waste incineration. It would allow limited use of new or alternative technology to turn 350,000 tons of waste, or less than 5 percent of all trash, into fuel each year.
“Part of it is to be open to technological innovation,” Kimmell said. “The second part of it is we are facing a capacity shortfall.”
Depending on the success of its new efforts to reduce waste, the state is expected to be short on landfill space for between 700,000 and 2 million tons of trash a year by 2020, Kimmell said. Massachusetts already has to ship some of its waste out of state, an option that may not remain cost effective, the commissioner said.
Industries that burn trash to generate power generally support the state’s proposal. But the new proposal has sparked resistance.
The coalition Don’t Waste Massachusetts said it delivered more than 10,000 signatures in opposition to the change on Feb. 28. The coalition argues expanded burning is inefficient and dirty, and the technology DEP favors is neither new nor successful elsewhere in the U.S.
Some say the DEP needs to focus more on enforcing existing bans on dumping recyclables, yard waste and other materials already barred from landfills. Estimates say at least 15 percent of trash that ends up in landfills should not be there, said Janet Domenitz, executive director of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, MassPIRG.
“It’s contradictory to include new sources of combustion if you haven’t done every single thing that you can to reduce, reuse, recycle,” she said.
Kimmell said increased enforcement is part of DEP’s plan, but it is “very time-consuming and labor intensive,” and may not ultimately address the landfill space crunch.
THE STATE’S PLAN
The state’s proposed Solid Waste Master Plan also would:
- Foster a new market for turning food and other organic waste into compost or using it for energy, with hopes of diverting about a third of this type of garbage from landfills by the end of the decade.
- Provide technical assistance and new grants to help towns and cities increase residential and commercial recycling, including encouraging pay-as-you-throw programs.
- Try to establish new ways to divert construction and demolition waste from landfills.
- Expand regional programs to collect and dispose of hazardous chemicals and products.
- Step up emission and air pollution controls for existing municipal waste incinerators.
- Look into requiring waste haulers to provide recycling services.
Read more: http://www.enterprisenews.com/news/x1893343782/State-aims-to-reduce-landfill-waste-by-80-percent#ixzz2OdvxO4vX
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