#cswd

Today is America Recycles Day, a day to learn more about what is recyclable, remember to reduce waste, recycle more and encourage others to do the same! All of the recyclables collected on campus go to Chittenden Solid Waste District’s (CSWD) Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) in Williston. We have lots of food and beverage packaging that is recyclable on campus – but only if it’s free of food! In this blog post, Clare explains just how clean recycling needs to be and why it’s important to their process and business model. So, remember to rinse before your recycle!

By Clare Innes, Chittenden Solid Waste District (CSWD) Marketing and Communications Coordinator. Originally posted on the CSWD Blog on 11/1/16.

For a product or material to be recyclable, there needs to be someone out in the global commodities market who wants to buy that material and use it to manufacture new product.

Buyers let us know what types of material they want and what condition it has to be in for them to accept it—and none of them want food residue on the plastic, paper, or metal recyclables they buy.

What you can do

Empty & rinse plastic and metal cans, bottles, and tubs clean before putting them in your recycling bin. For sticky stuff like peanut butter, try letting them soak for a few minutes with hot water to loosen up the remains before a good rinse.

^ This jar needs a good rinse

Keep paper or cardboard clean & dry. Any paper contaminated with food residue or grease stains is a big recycling no-no.

Why it matters

We use the money we make from selling recyclables to fund recycling programs.

If we are paid less for our loads because of too much contamination, or if we have to pay to send food-contaminated recyclables to the landfill rather than to market, that’s less funding for programs that serve you.

Plus, food contamination makes the job and working environment much harder for the 20+ workers who sort your cans, bottles, jugs, and paper at our recycling facility.

^ Phoebe the dog (Photo by fsamuels)

Easy rinsing

Intro by Caylin McKee, UVM Dining Sustainability Manager.

Disposable packaging leads to seemingly endless confusion at waste bin. I witness this in our dining locations on campus and beyond. We take steps to educate with detailed 3D signage and UVM Eco-Reps even offer in person sorting support in high traffic areas and at large campus events. Yet we continue to see contamination in all of our streams. However well intentioned you may be, it can still be hard to remember the details of what goes where. I’ve noticed that sometimes this confusion can lead to frustration and a feeling that there is no method to the madness. 

This week an employee at University Marche told me that he heard black plastic was no longer recyclable. His co-worker skeptically asked how something could no longer be recyclable just because of it’s color. When I looked it up I thought Jonny’s post did such a great job of explaining not only this new change, but also why recycling criteria changes periodically, that I asked if I could repost it here. Happy reading!

Post below by Jonny Finity, Web and Marketing Specialist at CSWD, and originally posted July 15, 2016 on the CSWD blog.

Black plastic is pretty easy to identify. It’s plastic, and it’s black. And in Chittenden County, it doesn’t belong in your recycling bin. We recommend reusing black plastic containers to store leftovers, or in a craft project. But if you can’t invent another use for them, black plastic goes in the trash.

If you’re wondering why, keep reading.

The short answer

The global commodities market – where we sell the recyclables we collect – isn’t buying black plastic. In recent years our recycling center (called the Materials Recovery Facility, or MRF) has had trouble selling bales containing black plastic at a high enough price to cover our processing costs. At times we couldn’t even give them away. And because black plastic makes up a tiny fraction (0.05%) of the recycling stream, we decided to focus on maximizing the value of the other 99.95% of recyclables that come through our door.

For these reasons, we no longer accept black plastic for recycling. Please reuse black plastic containers, or place them in the trash.

A longer answer

All plastics are not created equal. Some plastics are easy to recycle – and are more valuable. Black plastic is neither. In fact, including black plastic in the recycling stream actually makes it more difficult and expensive to recycle other kinds of plastic, too.

The fact is, black plastic can’t be made into as many things.Black plastic is theoretically recyclable – that is, in a perfect world you could open your own processing plant, collect a bunch of black plastic food trays, melt them all down and turn them into…more black plastic food trays.

But there’s the rub (at least, part of it). There’s a limit to what can be manufactured out of black plastic, which makes it a lot less valuable.

It’s also difficult to sort. Another problem: companies that buy our recyclables haven’t figured out a dependable way to sort it. Most of them use infrared, optical sorting devices to separate different types of plastics that arrive in the same bale. Because black plastic absorbs the infrared light instead of bouncing it back to the sensor, it’s really hard and more expensive for them to deal with. They don’t want it.

The economics of recycling

For the most part, recycling is like any other industry – when a lot of people want to buy the product you have, the price for it goes up. As long as the price covers your costs, you can stay in business. If not, you’ve got to find a way to change and adapt.

But lately, viable markets for black plastic have dried up. We’ve spent a lot of time looking at how to change the way we process black plastics to keep up with the declining markets, keeping in mind CSWD’s mission to reduce waste sent to the landfill.

After feedback from the plastic buyers, we found that, by taking black plastic out of the mix, we had access to consistent, viable markets for the remainder of our plastics. We’re now able to move recyclable material to markets that are able and willing to recycle it.

More than just economics

Ultimately, recycling isn’t just an economic decision. It’s also about taking responsibility for our environment, conserving our resources, and keeping more of our stuff out of the landfill.

So we took a hard look at the impact black plastic has on the landfill. And we discovered that black plastic actually makes up a tiny fraction of the recycling stream: 0.05% of it, actually.

So while it never feels good for us to make a decision that means sending material to the landfill, we have to weigh the benefits and costs. So we’re focusing on more effectively recycling the other 99.95% of recyclable material that comes through our doors, and make sure that we get the most value for it – so that we can keep more material out of the landfill.

Does this mean that recycling is broken?

Actually, just the opposite. You may have read some national news stories lately about recycling centers (i.e. MRFs) shutting down because they just weren’t profitable. As a municipality, CSWD doesn’t run its recycling center for profit. Instead, our goal is to keep as much out of the landfill as possible. We can do that only by carefully watching the recycling markets, and making decisions that ensure the long-term sustainability of our recycling facility.

It’s frustrating for us to have to take something out of the recycling stream and put it back into the trash stream. We don’t make this decision lightly. But we are subject to changes in the global marketplace when it comes to turning recyclables into new products. And unfortunately, we don’t see the situation changing in the foreseeable future.