Seven bills sponsored by Sen. David Watters, D-Dover, and Deputy Speaker of the House Rep. Karen Ebel, D-New London, seek to incorporate many of the findings the legislative committee charged with studying recycling streams and solid waste management in the state. The committee was formed following the passage of legislation last year.
According to the report, the legislators found after receiving testimony from 50 stakeholders in the solid waste stream the state has been lagging behind other states in solid waste management best practices. This occurring while the global market for recycling products is in a state of upheaval after China, formerly the world’s leading purchaser of recycle waste products, virtually exited the marketplace overnight beginning in 2017.
China reduced the amount of plastic it imports by 92%. The government imposed a rigorous standard of 0.5% contaminated on imported recycling waste companies, which is a standard the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, a waste management industry advocacy group, says is, “impossible to achieve.”
The crunch has been felt in the communities of the Seacoast and across the western world. Over the past several years many Seacoast communities have faced rising costs for recycling services from their contracted waste haulers. “Our communities are on islands with their individual solid waste contracts navigating a global market,” Ebel said. “It’s why it’s of paramount importance to really figure out a long-term solution. (On the committee) we heard from small towns and big cities and they all told us they really need some guidance from the top.”
For example, in Newfields, the town’s Board of Selectmen voted to end curbside recycling altogether. Then a citizen’s petition for the town to reinstitute recycling for the upcoming year was placed on the warrant for the upcoming town election. Dover’s next contract with Waste Management for trash and recycling collection is for five years starting and June and will cost the city an additional $1 million in its first year.
“Once you stop a recycling program, it’s hard to get it started again because people get in the habit of throwing everything away,” Watters said. “You almost wish communities keep recycling going even at the increased cost so it’s still in place when the market improves.”
According to the report, the Solid Waste Management Bureau within Department of Environmental Services (DES) has been consistently understaffed and has been unable to keep up with the statutory requirement to update the state’s solid waste management plan every six years. The most recent plan is from 2003, the legislative report notes.