White River Junction
“When we compared the amount of municipal solid waste coming from residences and businesses from 2014 to 2015, we had a 5 percent reduction,” said Cathy Jamieson, who is overseeing the implementation of the new law on behalf of Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources.
Jamieson said she expects those numbers to be even better for 2016, because during the first half of 2015, a ban against putting recyclables such as glass, certain plastics and cardboard into the landfill had not yet gone into effect. July 2015 was also the point in time when municipalities were required to start charging users based on the volume of their non-recyclable trash, giving individuals and businesses a financial incentive to divert materials from the waste stream.
Though enforcement against consumers has consisted largely of signage and gentle reminders, the numbers seem to indicate that the law has nudged the behavior of many Vermonters into greener pastures.
In all, the state disposed of 390,552 tons of trash in 2015, down from 411,200 tons in 2014. On a macro level, the state has also seen other positive signs during the same period — the weight of recycled materials climbed from 202,272 tons in 2014 to what preliminary figures suggest will be about 208,745 tons, an increase of more than 3 percent.
Meanwhile, food donations, mostly from food sellers who benefit by diverting organic materials from their waste streams, have soared, by about 27 percent in 2015 and another 40 percent so far in 2016, according to a joint statement issued last week by the Vermont Foodbank and the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Jamieson said the state doesn’t have a breakdown of trash rates by town or by region, because it uses reporting figures from a variety of sources that include haulers and transfer stations, many of which have overlapping service areas that have to be adjusted to ensure that waste isn’t double-counted.
In Hartford, the numbers seemed to be roughly in line with state figures.
At Hartford’s transfer station, Solid Waste Supervisor Bob Vahey provided figures from the first year the recyclable materials ban was in effect, a 12-month period that ended in July. During that time, trash decreased by 5 percent, and recycling increased by 4.5 percent as compared to the previous 12-month period.
But other Upper Valley waste districts saw different trends.
“Recycling volumes are up,” Tom Kennedy said on Wednesday. “And trash is also up.”
As executive director of the Southern Windsor County Regional Planning Commission, Kennedy is the district manager of two different solid waste districts — the Greater Upper Valley Solid Waste Management District, which serves Bridgewater, Hartland, Norwich, Pomfret, Sharon, Strafford, Thetford, Vershire, West Fairlee and Woodstock; and the Southern Windsor/Windham Counties Solid Waste Management District, which serves 13 municipalities including Springfield, Vt., Weathersfield, Windsor and West Windsor.
Throughout those two districts, Kennedy said, the trash flowing through 11 different transfer stations has seen a slight uptick or been flat, while recycling has gone up by roughly 15 percent.
Chet Brown is manager of the Bethel Royalton Solid Waste Program, which serves Royalton, Bethel, Rochester, Hancock, Granville, Pittsfield, Stockbridge and Barnard.
“My trash went up about 10 percent, and my recycling went up about 20 percent,” Brown said.
Officials had different ideas about why there are regional differences in the trends.
Brown said his numbers seem to have gone up in response to an education outreach campaign that he was motivated to undertake by Act 148. The campaign seems to have brought in more customers, but he doesn’t know why any of them would have been using trash services from out of the area.
“We’re finding more and more people,” he said. “I don’t know where they were all going before.”
Solid waste experts generally agree that one big driver of waste generation is the economy; in a strong economy, people buy more goods and produce more trash, while a down economy results in less of everything. The fact that the statewide decline in trash disposal has happened during a time of economic growth is part of what has made state officials so confident in crediting the new law with the change.
Kennedy suggested that the towns in his districts might be seeing economic growth that is canceling out the reduction of improved consumer behavior.
Kennedy also noted that population-heavy Chittenden County, where the Burlington Free Press reported last week that the local solid waste district is considering fines against three noncompliant businesses, has been unusually aggressive in promoting recycling, which could skew statewide figures.
“If you took out Chittenden County and then you measured it, what would it be?” he asked.
But Jamieson said the differences could have more to do with different methods of accounting, than actual differences in demographic trends or recycling habits.
For example, Jamieson said, the state doesn’t count construction or demolition waste in its figures, while local officials might reasonably include such waste.
At Hartford’s transfer station on Route 5, down the hill from the primary recycling and trash disposal operations, a rough dirt road winds its way through house-sized piles of compost, branches, stumps and logs, some of which have been there for so long they are topped by a screen of brush.
On July 1 this year, under Act 148, a ban on mixing leaf and yard waste into the general trash stream went into effect. At the same time, transfer stations were required to begin accepting and setting aside clean lumber, grass clipping, leaves and brush.
The leaf and yard waste has been incorporated into the existing piles, but the clean lumber pile is much smaller, and a popular stop for scavengers, including some who stop by as many as four times in a single day, according to transfer station staff.
On Wednesday, Bridget Baker, 37, was among those combing through the pile of wooden pallets, lumber and furniture scraps. She loaded a headboard and a footboard into her car.
Baker habitually recycles driftwood and other materials for creative projects associated with her business, Baker Pottery, in White River Junction.
“We’re a disposable country,” she said, gesturing toward the heap of wood. “You could probably build a house out of this.”
State officials are also working to react to what they acknowledge could be an unintended consequence of the law — the spread of invasive species such as poison parsnip and chervil that, along with other yard waste, will get diverted away from the landfill and into composting operations of various size and management plans.
Elizabeth Spinney, the invasive plant coordinator for the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, received an email from Hartford resident Karen Douville asking how invasive plants should be disposed of under the new law.
“The home compost piles, they don’t get hot enough to kill the seeds,” Spinner said, “so it’s driving the need for composting facilities that are able to handle the material.”
The DEC has information on its website about different ways to manage invasive plants.
Jamieson said no one should allow Act 148 to disrupt the safe handling of invasive species.
“We’re not going to beat up on a homeowner because they make a mistake or put the wrong thing in the trash,” she said. “No one is going to get fined because they put the tomato blight plant in the trash bag.”
Jamieson said that, with the issue now raised, the state is coming up with guidelines to codify that common-sense approach.
Brown and Kennedy said the change had caused only a modest increase in leaf and yard waste.
“I think I’ve seen maybe two trucks in the last month,” Brown said.
In Strafford, Selectboard Chairman John Freitag said the larger impact of Act 148 on Strafford and other communities has been cost.
At Town Meeting last spring, voters in various towns, including Bradford, West Fairlee and Strafford all heard that their solid waste budgets had been increased in order to comply with the law.
In Strafford, the town’s longtime recyclable hauler decided to stop servicing the town, citing a mixture of increased Act 148 requirements and a downturn in the recyclable markets. Hiring a replacement cost the town roughly $15,000 more.
“I think that the law was very well-intentioned,” Freitag said. “I’m not sure about the practicality. It’s become a very costly thing. … You can’t simply put more strain on local property taxes. It’s the old unfunded mandate thing.”
Baker said she understands that Act 148 might be burdensome to some, but she echoed the arguments of many of the law’s supporters on behalf of the greater good.
“I think it’s important, because Mother Nature needs assistance keeping clean,” she said. “I do my part. I care about recycling. And I’m a supporter of anything that encourages other people to care.”
While the universal recycling law has already wrought huge changes in the state’s solid waste landscape, what may prove to be the biggest obstacle is yet to come.
Over the past few years, an effort to phase food scraps out of the general waste stream and into composting processing facilities has focused on the largest producers of those food scraps — currently, operations such as grocery stores and large hospitals that generate at least 26 tons of food scraps per year must divert material to a certified facility, as long as a facility exists within 20 miles.
But on July 1, 2017, for the first time, trash haulers, transfer stations and other trash drop-off facilities must begin accepting food scraps separately from end users of any size. On July 1, 2020, food scraps will be banned from the landfill entirely, forcing all users, including homeowners, to completely separate such materials from the trash stream.
Jamieson said the state’s infrastructure is already stretching and adapting to meet the new need.
“We have about the same number of composting facilities as we did a couple of years ago but what’s changing is the service carrier that’s serving them,” said Jamieson. “The hauling trucks are going out further to collect food scraps and carry it to a facility.”
At the end of the month, Jamieson will meet with stakeholders to talk about possible implementation issues. One problem is that two areas of the state — regions surrounding Newport and Springfield — are not currently served by any nearby composting facilities or haulers that accept food scraps.
“If we can address those, either by new facilities or expansion of service areas, we’ll have pretty much the entire state covered,” she said.
Kennedy, the planner in Southern Windsor County, said that solutions are in the works for the Springfield area.
“I’m not pessimistic about it. We’ll come up with a plan and we’ll be able to meet the goals,” he said. “In the short term, the district is probably going to have collection points and we will hire a hauler to pick it up and then take it to a facility.”
Kennedy said that hauling those scraps to a distant facility will be expensive, but it will be somewhat offset by the fact that tipping fees to drop off food is less than fees for trash.
With the change on the horizon, some transfer stations are scrambling to get ahead of the curve by setting up the resources they’ll need to accept the food waste, and ship it back out.
Strafford has no transfer station, but Michael Scanlon, chairman of the town recycling committee, said haulers who serve the town will be burdened by the new requirement, and that it could prevent them from continuing to serve Strafford.
“The law is written as if everyone is set up to do these things,” he said.
Brown said that, in anticipation of the new requirement, he began accepting food scraps in Royalton a year ago.
“I don’t like it,” he said.
Under the current system, customers who bring in food scraps add them to dedicated bins that can hold about 200 pounds of waste each.
In the winter, he said, the fact that the facility isn’t heated took a toll.
“What do you do with a 200-pound block of ice?” he asked. “The compost guy won’t take it. It’s going to screw up the temperature of his pile, never mind you can’t get it out of the bin. We had to start towing the bins into the boiler room. It’s not pretty.”
Summer brought its own challenges, he said. Right now, he declines meat products, though the law will require that he accept them in 2017.
Despite his efforts to screen meat out, some got in earlier this year, and the impact was dramatic.
“You’ve instantly got maggots in your barrel,” he said. “We fought that problem for a month because of one incident. They immediately migrated out, into the cracks on the concrete floor. Then you’ve got to pick everything up off the floor to make sure they aren’t under there. All the ones you miss become flies.”
With the current volume, Brown said, he schedules weekly pickups, and “the smell is ‘Oh, my God.’ ”
He predicts that the new law could increase the volume tenfold, which will be difficult to manage even if he pays to have it picked up twice per week.
Jamieson said the state is prepared to work through issues with organics, just as it is working through problems that cropped up when recyclable materials were banned from the landfill.
“The point of the law is to manage our materials more wisely, so we can get the benefits of those materials,” she said. She referred again to the shrinking of the trash stream, and increase in recyclable material as evidence that, hiccups aside, the law’s goals are being achieved.
“We’re disposing less,” she said. “And, more and more, we’re putting it in the right place.”
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.