Looking in the rearview mirror from my home in Florida, I see a municipal solid-waste recycling, compost, and transfer facility that is failing.
Before my retirement two years ago, I managed the Windham Solid Waste Management District's operations for the past 20 years and need to set the record straight.
When George Murray, past executive director, and I left the district, we noted to the board of directors the need for change in operations to keep pace with the ever-changing recycling playing field. It was our suggestion to the board not to collect #3-#7 plastics because of unstable markets or no markets at all.
The board did not listen, and the floodgate was open to freestyle recycling - like the postal service, “if it fits, it ships.”
The extra trash that came in with the recyclables far offset the value of the warm, fuzzy feeling that the board had when the program was started. The value of the product and logistical cost for change in operations and increased workforce did not match.
We started the 5-cent can and bottle redemption program to offset the cost of the 3-7 plastic recycling program. The redemption of the 5-centers, with the help of Putney Road Redemption, netted the District $50,000 the first year!
We told the board of directors that more material would be needed to increase profitability and back-hauled clean, profitable plastics from the Greater Upper Valley Solid Waste Management District on our return construction demolition runs to Hartford. This program has been abandoned.
Management has since lost the waste-stream recyclables from the towns of Chesterfield and Hinsdale, N.H. because of a lack of negotiation. I had envisioned adding more towns to make the facility regional and to increase tonnage.
The district needs to keep pace with the times. Zero-sort recycling is the trend. Single-stream reduces collection cost. All recyclables would go onto the same truck.
The dual-stream Materials Recovery Facility is old and tired. The district does not generate enough material to upgrade to single stream, unless it has money set aside for capital improvements.
The Materials Recovery Facility should be closed and turned into a transfer station for single-stream recycling. The material would then be put into tractor-trailers and taken to single-stream MRFs in the tri-state area.
All district member towns should privatize the collection of recyclables as they do with trash hauling. These systems for trash transfer, recycling, and composting are in place around the area. The district in its current form is expensive to run; when market values are low, it takes more to make more. I don't see this trend at WSWMD.
The district would still need to act as a regulatory agency to ensure compliance with state mandates. All other functions would be done by the private sector. Post-closure funds were set aside in 1995 when the landfill closed.
Assessments to the towns would be greatly reduced. Each town would then be on a “pay-as-you-throw” program. The towns without trash transfer stations would operate the transfer station on the Old Ferry Road. The towns with transfer stations then would not pay for running the district's transfer station, as they would already be paying for their own.