Cutting Down at the Landfill: New Products Targeted
Friday, April 15, 2011
Mattresses, hypodermic needles and leftover paint are on a General Assembly hit list of items that should not be filling up the state’s Central Landfill in Johnston.
New legislation aimed at recycling those items properly to lengthen the life of the landfill is on the agenda at the State House, a bill that one lawmaker called probably the “most contentious” the Senate and House environment committees will address.
Closing Landfill an Everyday Reality
“Our mission is to not landfill recyclables,” said Sarah Kite, the Director of Recycling Services for the RI Resource Recovery Corporation.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“We are faced every day with the reality of the landfill someday being closed,” said Kite. “It is probably off the public’s radar screen, but it is very much a resource and environmental question for us.”
Mattresses, “Sharps” and Paint
Mattresses take up far too much valuable space and are a handful to manage; “medical sharps,” as needles and other human health-oriented piercing materials are known in the trade, are dangerous to trash haulers and workers at the landfill; and toxic household paints make up 70 to 75 percent of the hazardous wastes being dropped off at RIRRC bi-weekly Eco-Depots. All need the special focus the “Product Stewardship” bill aims to give these eminently recyclable waste products in the future.
Two years ago, a bill was passed to authorize the state’s Department of Environmental Management to conduct a study for recommendations for “stewardship” in Rhode Island, said Rep. Donna Walsh, prime sponsor in the House of this year’s legislation.
A key element of the act is that the statewide product stewardship plan that is called for, which will evolve into a functioning program, is to be “financed and managed by a producer or group of producers” and “addresses the environmental or health impacts of a product over the entire life cycle of that product.”
That explains the number of industry representatives who have made trips to appear at the recent House hearing (a Senate hearing on the sister bill will be held shortly) and to Rep. Walsh’s office.
Health and Environmental Concerns
In reading between the lines of the detailed legislation, the message is clear that reduction of the amount of waste generated is also strongly encouraged, as much as making any plans to dispose of it through incineration is heavily discouraged. What is also demanded is that the products chosen for stewardship will be considered for their “potential to reduce waste, toxicity, greenhouse gas emissions or other environmental or health impacts.” A good one-stop shopping goal for the environmental community.
Manufacturers to Finance System
Working in conjunction with the Boston-based Product Stewardship Institute, DEM came up with a report, and held a meeting April of 2010 to discuss drafting frameworks for handling the targeted products. Industry reps, environmental agencies and people from states that had more advanced stewardship programs, including some from Quebec, tried to put together a bill at that time. However Walsh thought it was too late in the legislative session to carefully craft it and then go through the lawmaking process, so it was shelved until this year.
The bill aims to “establish a manufacturer financed system for the collection, recycling and reuse” of the products; “develop a comprehensive strategy...for waste prevention and reduction of discarded products in the state;” and “promote the development of an infrastructure for the reuse and recycling.”
Burying, Bouncing, Floating
The most obvious and visible products are mattresses; almost as prevalent as the number of stores selling mattresses in RI, which seem to dot the corner of every retail bloc in the state.
Nicole Poepping, campaign organizer for Clean Water Action, a strong advocate for product stewardship, points out that illegal dumping of mattresses has a high cost to municipalities. At a cost of $10 per mattress for hauling one away in a city such as Central Falls, the idea of disposing of your old bed in a hidden stream rather than at curbside has its financial appeal. “The cities have to pay for those,” she says.
Currently, RIRRC charges $10 per mattress brought to the landfill. According to Kite, they then give $9.85 per mattress to Conigliaro Industries in Framingham, MA to take them apart, spring-by-spring, foam piece-by-foam piece, to sell to specialized recyclers. But as Kite points out, that 15-cent margin doesn’t take into account the landfill’s labor costs, which turns doing the right thing into a losing proposition for the state.
The alternative is trying to bury them. The fact that they are “highly, highly recyclable” not only runs counter to RIRCC’s mission, but proper disposal is also cumbersome. The mattresses take up too much space, are hard to compact, and the springs allow them to bounce up and “float” to the top of landfill burying grids. At the landfill’s estimated intake of 35,000 mattresses per year, that is a great deal of wasted, unmanageable space.
(On the brighter side, most large, private mattress retailers such as Cardi’s and Sleepy’s handle the recycling on their own with their free takeaways when someone purchases a new mattress and/or box spring.)
Needles Are Health Concern
Residential use and disposal of medical sharps pose a different set of problems. But they also can be beneficial to patients and doctors.
Improper disposal in trash cans or recycling bins pose a health threat to people who handle that waste, on the street and at the landfill.
If there were a set plan in place, backed by manufacturers and retailers who would cooperate, doctors would have a program to refer patients to, especially people new to self-injections. If it is easy and accessible, that “can help calm patients,” said Kite, and make it easy to comply.
Past Successes Provide Examples
There gave been past successes in this area. The Eureka Sharps program was one, where sharps used at home could be recycled at kiosks at pharmacies and firehouses. There they would be picked up by specialty recycling firms like Sterile Medical Waste Company, and never see the landfill. But the funding for past RIRRC grants to the Diabetes Foundation of RI to carry out the service ran out, despite the program running well. With manufacturers bearing some responsibility for costs in the future, the process is still workable.
Today, people are instructed to put their needles into a bleach-style bottle, seal it completely, and simply put it in the trash basket with the other waste. But an unsealed bottle or one unmarked in a recycling bin can still cause problems to workers.
Whether that full-fledged support from sharps manufacturers will materialize without strong government intervention remains to be seen. Rep. Walsh was recently visited by industry reps, who gave her a tip-snipping gadget designed to eliminate worries about an unexpected puncture. She displayed it with a grin in her State House office, as if to say, “It is going to take more than this, mister.”
Laying the Paint on Thick
Most familiar to the average citizen is the problem of disposing of unused paint, which seems to appear in the basement of almost every home as if it came with the property – which it often does when a house is sold.
The amount of paint that is disposed of outside of recycling can only be guessed at, but paint brought in for proper recycling makes up what RIRRC’s Kite estimates to be 70 to 75 percent of their take of household “bio-hazards” at Eco-Depots. This is a RIRRC program conducted a little more than bi-weekly over the course of a year; 20 times at the Central Landfill site, and on 15 more Saturdays throughout the year in select communities. Disposed-of cans may even include old cans of lead paint, now recognized as a major health risk.
Group to Advise and Guide
The people that the legislation will be summoning to the table to make up a standing advisory committee to oversee product stewardship - and, after two years, target further recyclables down the line - are to include representatives of producers; local governments; environmental groups; the solid waste recycling industry (including RIRRC); and the retail industry. It may also invite representatives from other states, presumably with a successful track record in this sort of endeavor, to participate as non-members.
The inclusion out of the out-of-staters also plays into Rep. Walsh’s stated long-term goal: “We want to see regional cooperation,” she said. “Have New England states focusing on the same areas.”
Not Nervous About the Challenge
For the proponents and advocates of recycling in mass quantities with industry paying the way, such as Clean Water Action, there is optimism. Once the planning and programs are vetted and established, a “statewide product stewardship system” is to be put in place to be run by producers or “stewardship organizations” to be overseen by the RI DEM.
For veterans of the recycling wars like RIRRC, “We’re not nervous about what’s coming, we need to do it,” according to Kite. “We have daily, on-the-ground knowledge. That’s why we chose these three items (mattresses, medical sharps and paint). We’re ready to move when we need to move.”
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