It used to be that all garbage was thrown into one bin, but with recently implemented laws, recycling has increased in Vermont and waste in the landfill has decreased, due to the effort of separating trash materials.
In 2014, transfer stations and drop-off facilities started accepting residential recyclables at no charge. The next year, recyclables were banned from the landfill and this year, leaf and yard debris has been banned. These actions were taken to decrease the amount of waste that sits in the state’s only landfill, which produces toxic methane gas and adds to greenhouse gas emissions. The need for the Universal Recycling law stemmed from the gas, as well as stagnated waste rates for the past 10 years in Vermont. By parting with unnecessary garbage, transfer stations are able to dump less frequently due to the lack of odor.
“The cost of recycling is a lot less than trash pickup and I think that’s the biggest incentive,” Dale Baker of Casella Waste Management said. “It’s cheaper to get rid of recycling. I think people recycle more if they don’t have to sort it. In the old days you had two separate containers. This is a lot easier for the homeowner and we pick it up at the curb.”
Even though these materials are banned, waste management companies now offer single-stream recycling or ‘zero sort,’ and recycling for yard and leaf debris. Most commonly, residents rake their yard and dump grass shavings and leaves to the end of the yard or put it out to the road for a once-a-year pick up. But now, there’s the option to have it recycled, which went into effect July 1. The goal is to make the debris more manageable, according to a release from Department of Environmental Conservation.
Josh Kelly from the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources said food scraps is the next focus. Even though yard debris makes up a small portion of the waste stream, he said, organic material such as soiled paper and food waste, makes up one third of the stream. Every five years a waste composition study is done to determine what trash really contains.
At the end of June, the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation announced that trash disposal across the state has decreased 5 percent since the Universal Recycling law went into effect in 2015. The rate of recycling has increased from 33 percent to 35 percent. As a result, the Vermont Food Bank has had an increase in food donations thus far. According to the announcement, an estimated four million pounds of food will be rescued from producers and retailers in Vermont, which is a 60 percent increase in the last year.
To read the full story, visit http://www.reformer.com/news/ci_30146431/since-start-material-bans-2014-recycling-is-up.