Why not? A lot more people could be recycling

By JOE MIZER
The Times-Reporter

BOLIVAR - Recycle.

It’s the right thing to do.

It’s good for your community.

It’s good for your country.

So why isn’t more of it being done?

David Held, executive director of the Stark-Tuscarawas-Wayne Joint Solid Waste District, commends residents who recycle for their efforts in the district. But he estimates that less than 5 percent of the residential waste being generated actually is being recycled.

That means a lot of those plastic milk jugs and soft drink bottles, steel food cans, and glass jars and bottles – not to mention newspapers and cardboard – are going to the landfill. There, recyclables that could take hundreds of years to decompose will occupy space that could have been used for non- recyclables.

Held believes the lack of participation could be blamed on a lack of recycling awareness, and/or the lack of recycling programs in some communities.

But that’s all due to change over the next few years, Held said recently. He pointed out that the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has set a goal of recycling 25 percent of the residential and commercial waste generated.

Currently, commercial recycling helps boost the combined rate of residential and commercial recycling to about 10 percent of the waste generated by the two entities.

Held said commercial recycling is about 25 percent – primarily because of the value of cardboard and boxes, which generate a source of revenue for a commercial company.

Industry, however, leads the way in recycling, with more than 60 percent of industrial waste being recycled.

Held said the solid waste district is fortunate to have the Kimble Transfer & Recycling Facility on Bolivar Rd. SW, Canton, that handles much of the residential recycling waste generated in the three counties.

A recent tour of the facility revealed that recyclables arrive in trucks from throughout the district and are taken into the large enclosed facility. Recyclables are dumped by the truckload onto the floor, and the separation process begins.

Everything in the pile goes by conveyor to an upper level where cardboard and newspapers are the first to be separated out. That job is done manually by clients of the Stark County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, who stand on both sides of the conveyor as it passes between them.

The conveyor continues moving the recyclables to yet another belt where they make a left turn and a magnetic separator pulls off the metal cans, allowing them to drop into a bin below while aluminum, plastic, glass and waste materials continue on.

Other workers along that conveyor separate the plastic containers, such as milk jugs, soft drink bottles and detergent jugs, into their respective bins. Glass also is separated and sorted by color.

John Lancaster, plant manager, noted that empty milk jugs are worth more money per pound, but there is a larger volume of plastic in soft drink bottles, including the two-liter variety. Colored milk jugs consist of a different density of plastic than non-colored jugs, and therefore, they are separated by color.

The final separation process uses eddy currents (electrical current used to induce a magnetic field in aluminum) to remove aluminum cans from the remainder of the waste, allowing only non-recyclable waste materials to continue on as the end product. The waste, after all else is removed, is conveyed to another pile where it is loaded back onto trucks to be taken to the Kimble Landfill near Dover.

The separated recyclables at the Kimble Transfer & Recycling Facility then are made into large bales, weighing from 900 to 1,900 pounds, depending on the product. The bales are loaded, according to their makeup, onto semi tractor trailers until the trailer is filled to its 40,000 pound capacity.

Although the Kimble Transfer & Recycling Facility shops monthly for the best prices being offered for their truckloads of recycled materials, Held said the sales of those materials doesn’t yet cover the costs of collecting and processing them.

That’s why Held believes the recycling incentive program under the new EPA grant plan will help.

“The more that a community recycles, the more grant money they’re eligible for,” he said.

In the past, the EPA would just give a lump-sum grant amount to a community that recycles; now it’s going to be based on tonnage. For every ton a community recycles, it will be eligible for up to $45 to cover the expense of collecting its recyclables.

Both Lancaster and Tyler Fitzgerald, general manager of the Kimble Landfill, said trucks leaving the recycling facility with waste are hauling it back to the landfill. They also said there are no recyclables being dumped in the landfill, contrary to some rumors that have indicated otherwise.

“It (dumping recyclables) makes absolutely no business sense,” said Fitzgerald.

“It brings no value to the table,” said Lancaster.

Fitzgerald said they sell the recycled commodities all over the country and sometimes international markets come into play. “It’s wherever the ... whatever is drawing the highest price for the commodities,” he added.

Lancaster said the Asian market also drives a lot of the recycling industry because it has the greatest demand.

The three counties that make up the solid waste district, with a combined population of 585,000 people and 275,000 households, previously had separate county district offices. Those offices were consolidated Jan. 1 into one central office at 9918 Wilkshire Blvd. NE, Bolivar.

“We centralized our recycling offices, and we’re going to standardize our education programs,” Held said.

He’s looking for a large boost in the recycling efforts of Stark County with the addition of a new curbside recycling program being implemented this year in Canton.

And yes, there are some items that can’t and aren’t being recycled.

Plastics, with the recycle numbers of 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, aren’t being recycled because the volume is low and there is no market demand for them. Styrofoam also is not recyclable, and it never breaks down in a landfill, according to Lancaster.

“It’s really market-driven,” Held said of the recycling industry. “But we’re required to recycle as much material as possible,” he added, citing paper, glass, plastic, aluminum, junk mail and cardboard as the bulk of it.

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