Questions and Concerns About the Frederick County Incinerator

These incinerator concerns have been sent to officials, politicians and candidates in Frederick County, Carroll County and the State of Maryland; the Northeast Maryland Waste Disposal Authority, and others.

Reducing Waste

Back to the serious discussion — what is going to be left

Sent 05/20/10:

In 28 years the NMWDA's Regional Incinerator which Frederick and Carroll Counties will have to subsidize may have worn out, just like the Harford trash facility. (BTW, who is paying for the dis-assembly of the Harford facility?)

It's folly to try to compare the decision making process of buying real estate to paying for someone else's pet project.

And the question remains, with increased composting awareness and opportunities, and with technological advances in plastic recycling or remanufacturing, and the replacement of plastic with compostable materials, what's going to be left to burn?

And how about removing construction and demolition waste?

How much is Frederick County currently disposing (is it still 500TPD?), and what is the goal diversion? 400 TPD? 200TPD? 100?

Advances in plastics — what will be left to burn?

Sent 05/20/10:

Plastic recycling advance from IBM, Stanford

Researchers from IBM and Stanford University were able to inexpensively and relatively quickly chemically depolymerize PET into monomers that can be used to make more PET, without any degradation of the material. In looking for a polymer-making process for making insulation layers for computer chips, the researchers developed a new catalyst that is able to chemically recycle PET at 75 degrees Celcius.

The researchers published their findings in the journal Macromolecules, and now will be taking the process to a scaled pilot at the Saudi Arabia's King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology. It could be available in five years, if the pilot is successful.

AND

Soccer teams to wear jerseys made from recycled bottles

Feb. 26 -- National soccer teams, including those from the United States, Brazil, Portugal and the Netherlands, will begin wearing jerseys made from recycled plastic bottles.

Nike unveiled the new jerseys in London made from up to eight recycled bottles each.

Suppliers to Nike used discarded plastic bottles from Japanese and Taiwanese landfill sites that were melted to produce new yarn that was then converted into fabric for the jerseys.

Other national teams using the new jerseys include South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Serbia and Slovenia.

"With today´s announcement, we are equipping athletes with newly designed uniforms that not only look great and deliver performance benefits, but are also made with recycled materials, creating less impact on our environment," said Charlie Denson, president of Nike Brand.

More compostables mean less waste to burn

Sent 02/16/10:

Frito-Lay is taking another step to improve the environmental impact of our packaging. Over the past 5 years we have removed more than 5 million pounds of packaging through package size optimizations, film thickness improvements, and seal changes. But this is not enough. Our next step is to change the material that we use to make our packaging films. Today our package is constructed of multiple layers of polyolefin materials (mainly polyethylene, PE and polypropylene, PP) which are derived from petroleum by-products. While these materials are extremely efficient (in both cost and performance) we challenged ourselves to find new, emerging technologies that will have a lower environmental impact. After 4 years of research and field trials we have found a material that meets our performance expectations. That material is known as PLA.

Like you, we dream of a world with less waste.

To truly address the impact of our packaging we knew we had to create a better bag. And guess what? We found the answer in nature.

Today, 33% of every 10 1/2 oz. size SunChips® bag is made with renewable, plant based materials. This is our first step to reduce the amount of non–renewable materials we use for packaging.

But the really exciting news is that in 2010, we plan to introduce the first fully compostable chip bag of its kind.

These innovative bags are designed to fully decompose in about 14 weeks when placed in a hot, active compost bin or pile.

So you eat the chips. The earth eats the bag. And we all live in a cleaner world."

See how we tested, and filmed, the compostability of the new bag.

Follow our journey to developing a better bag.

Take a small step in your own backyard – compost.

Sent 01/31/10:

EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) is happening here: Springs Global USA, Inc. in Fort Mill, SC sells a bath mat which includes a number to call to get a postage paid envelope to return the bath mat for recycling. It is available at the Sam's Club in Frederick.

And please see below the what Reader's Digest has to say about the future of plastic (which is optimal material for a trash incinerator.)

So, if the majority of waste is compostable <http://beyondrecycling.org/pdf_files/FinalReport.pdf> , and if we capture and reuse (or recycle) most of the construction and demolition waste <http://www.buffaloreuse.org/Extreme/Extreme> and if businesses reduce and recycle their large amount of paper waste, then the question everyone is asking:

What do you commissioners see that we going to burn for the next 30 years in our $600,000,000 trash incinerator which will cost an additional $20,000,000 - $30,000,000 per year to operate?

Sent 01/24/10 to: countycommissioners@frederickcountymd.gov; rhart@frederickcountymd.gov; jgrossnickle@frederickcountymd.gov:

This from Reader's Digest, p. 21, Feb. 2010:

"New advances in manufacturing may make oil-based plastics a thing of the past. Polylactic acid (PLA) is a biodegradable, made from renewable materials, and safe for food packaging, reports the Economist.

Korean researchers have developed a new, less expensive technique to make PLA."

http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390709/direct/01/

Food waste collection, recycling and composting

Sent 04/15/08 from Jan Gardner:

I thought you all might be interested in the attached resolution from Boulder CO that I forwarded to the commissioners earlier today.

Jan

Sent 04/15/08 from County Commissioners President Jan Gardner to County Commissioners Charles Jenkins, Kai Hagen, David Gray, and Lennie Thompson; Mike Marschner; and County Manager Ron Hart:

Gentlemen,

Please see the attached resolution passed in 2006 by the elected officials in Boulder CO. It indicates that their recycling rate in 2006 is at or around 30%. This is a lower recycling rate than Frederick County! I appreciate the objectives in the resolution and that they are committed to reviewing policies etc... and moving to zero waste but clearly they are not there yet. With a 30% recycling rate, they clearly needed to take some action. They may need to learn something from us as well as us learning something from them!

Jan

Sent 02/13/10 from a Frederick County resident to Frederick and Carroll county commissioners:

Look what leadership can accomplish. First it takes a decision (a ZW Resolution), and then the ACTION to make it happen....

U.S. Residential Food Waste Collection And Composting

“'The new program came online for Boulder starting in August 2008, and was completed in January or February of 2009, with Louisville following in June,' says Bryce Isaacson, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Western Disposal. 'The landfill disposal fee in Colorado averages $13 to 14 per ton...'"

...

"In the current program, organics are collected every other week, alternating with recyclables. Due to the prevalence of bears in the nearby mountains, the program in Boulder doesn’t allow any meat or poultry, just fruits, vegetables, food-soiled paper and compostable products. Louisville is further from the mountains, and allows all food wastes. “On average, we collect 475 tons of organics per month, in addition to 517 tons per month from an organics drop off location, and 71 tons per month of commercial organics,” reports Isaacson. “Our residential organics tonnage will most likely increase as everyone comes on board. Just based on curbside collection of organics and recyclables, not including the drop-off, Boulder is now diverting over 50 percent.” The organics are hauled to Western Disposal’s composting facility, located within Boulder’s city limits." - Biocycle Magazine

Kai Hagen and Frederick County's Presentation about the Boulder ZW Trip

Frederick and Carroll Counties could move this direction — with leadership. We have the motivated citizens.

Thank you.

Why not offer food scrap recycling?

Dubuque is the first city in Iowa to offer a curbside food scrap recycling program. Currently up to 300 households, businesses, and institutions are encouraged to subscribe to this fee-based program. Subscribers will be provided a 2-gallon KitchenCatcher and a 12-gallon, wheeled, GreenCart. The subscription for each GreenCart has been lowered to $0.50 per month. It is billed on the City Utility Bill. Larger container options are available to our business and institutional customers: 48 gal carts at $5 per month, and 64 gallon carts at $7.50 per month.

The food scrap recycling program has helped us:

According to the 2005 IDNR Waste analysis, more than 25% of the current refuse materials set out from the average Dubuque household could be processed into compost.

Read the full article on food scrap recycling.

Incineration competes with recycling

Sent to the Solid Waste Advisory Committee:

Saying communities with a trash incinerator recycle more is simply making an incorrect correlation between incineration and recycling. It is a marketing strategy propagated by the incinerator industry. If this statement were correct wouldn't you think environmental groups would be supporting this in order to get us all to recycle?

Trash incinerators compete for the same resources as recycling programs. Trash incinerators do not exclude recyclable materials from their furnaces. Please read the contract.

The only increase in recycling which could possibly be attributed to the incinerator (as Ellis has pointed out), of perhaps a couple of percentage points, is any ferrous material which could be recovered from the incinerator ash. And of course there are better ways to increase recycling by 2-3% than by spending $600,000,000.

OR

Any increases in recycling due to accounting methods (such as the State of Maryland counting incinerator ash in its recycling rates)

OR

By a community investing money, time and education to increase recycling participation within the community.

Please look at the disclaimer Wheelabrator makes to its potential investors:

*trends toward recycling, waste reduction at the source and prohibiting the disposal of certain types of wastes could have negative effects on volumes of waste going to landfills and waste-to-energy facilities; [emphasis added]

And not only do incinerators compete for the same materials such as plastics and paper — they compete for another resource — money.

In Lake County, Florida a shortage of local garbage, and its economic impact on the flow of trash available for its incinerator will affect its recycling expansion. In an article titled, Lake hunts trash for cash beyond county borders, the county's "solid waste boss" is quoted as saying, "We don't want to turn off what we've turned on," ... "But we're also not promoting recycling in a big way right now."

Let's not make incorrect cause-and-effect correlations.

What are we doing as a community to address the waste which is not being recycled? [asked twice]

Frederick County generates 600-800 tons per day of waste. Is there a goal of cutting the tonnage by maybe half, and saving the taxpayer's $9M a year in long-hauling? I understand in many communities Construction & Demolition waste accounts for 25-30% of what is landfilled. A letter to the BoCC dated May 9, 2003, from the MDE states, "Aside from consuming large volumes of valuable landfill capacity, the use of a MSW landfill constructed to Subtitle D standards to dispose of C&D waste is a very expensive and inefficient method to manage such wastes. Since Frederick County along with the adjoining counties in the region are facing similar management issues relating to C&D waste, Frederick County is encouraged to reevaluate its management of C&D waste and investigate the development of a regional approach with adjoining counties for the processing and disposal of C&D waste."

Sent 02/07/10 to the Frederick County BOCC; County Manager Ron Hart; Carroll County commissioners; State Senators Alex Mooney, David Brinkley, Sue Hecht, Galen Clagett, Paul Stull, and Joseph Bartlett; and delegates:

I understand C&D is typically 25-30% of the waste stream. This is one of the cleanest and easiest ways to divert tonnage from our landfills. Please see how Wisconsin is addressing the reuse of this resource.

Starting January 1, 2010, recycling will be required on Wisconsin State construction projects over $5 million and on all state demolition projects. The move was announced by the State Division of State Facilities, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and non-profit WasteCap Resource Solutions, following a successful pilot by the three groups. [full article]

Sent 06/06/09:

First of all — I'd also like to know where the other 75% of our wastestream comes from. I knew that residential wasn't a lot, but I thought it was more than 25%. So, how much does industrial make up? Commercial? IOW, where is all the "weight" coming from in our wastestream? I don't mean different categories of materials - I mean from what categories of facilities?

Second: Jan [Gardner] — in referring to a 65% recycling goal, you said:

"While some people now think this goal is not aggressive enough, this was not the case at the time it was discussed and adopted, and no new program ideas have been suggested."

The discussion of a commercial composting facility was introduced recently, so you must mean something other than that, right? I watched the presentation given by Mr. Coker, Dr. Millner, and Mr. Hall and was impressed (again) with their knowledge. I know you've said that composting is more expensive than incineration, ton for ton, but exactly what figures and assumptions are you using because I find that hard to believe. Either way, there are all kinds of ways to distribute costs; the County doesn't need to be responsible for every aspect of every type of solid waste management that we could use. We need to consider and encourage more public/private partnerships. But, even Mr. Coker said that a comprehensive study to determine what types of strategies would be feasible for our County needs to be completed BEFORE any type of disposal is decided upon. It doesn't seem like this Board is willing to do that, though.....

Many of us understand the difficulties in comparing recycling rates within a state as well as between states (and other countries, for that matter.) In determining the bottom line for what type of disposal facility is most cost-effective as well as environmentally "sound," the amount and quality of material you will actually have left over AFTER all means of diversion are addressed (the non-reusable/non-recyclable/non burnable portion) is important. Even Lennie (per a recent FNP article) agrees that an incinerator is meant for the unrecyclable trash: "My position remains that is the least undesirable of many undesirable methods of getting rid of the county's unrecyclable trash," Thompson said. If I knew that it was only going to be "unrecyclable trash" that was going to be burned, I'd feel better. But we all know that it isn't. The more we recycle, the more we'll need to import in order to run the facility in it's most efficient manner.

I understand that it will take some time to implement certain strategies — but, we haven't even captured our low-hanging fruit yet — agreed? We're working harder at it and we're starting to make some obvious headway. But, our diet has really just begun in earnest!

Why handicap us (financially) when we've just started this diet? The expense of the incinerator will tie up money that could otherwise be used to divert materials (diet.)

We need a real goal to strive for, but what will it be? Are we settling on 900 TPD?

I know that this is incredibly frustrating (to say the least) for all of us and I really don't believe that any amount or quality of talk is going to influence anyone's decision on this topic. But, I need to express these concerns to you, so thanks for reading this far.....

Sent 06/16/09:

Jan [Gardner], are the figures available for FY2008 for the total amount of waste collected?

If the total were 400,000 tons for the year, then with a 44% recycling rate that would be 224,000 tons/year being landfilled after recycling.

That is 613 TPD either being long-hauled or landfilled, on average, each day.

And if residential recycling only accounts for 25% of our waste volume, then what is (or can be) done to lower the tonnage per day? That is what we would like to evaluate. (ie: Business recycling education and services, festival and event recycling support, styrofoam being banned for use in county buildings, etc.)

June 13, 2009 @ 02:06 PM:

The current 600 to 800 tons of waste per day assumes the existing 44% recycling rate so the math suggested needs to be adjusted accordingly. We have had days were the volume exceed 1,000 tons per day though volume is currently down due to the economy. Only about a quarter of the current recycle rate is related to residential so even if we double residential recycling the overall recycling rate will only go up by about 5%. Those who want to view the fiscal analysis related to WTE can find the information on the county webpage. While recycling and composting have a lower capital cost, the operating costs are much higher than the WTE or landfilling. Cost is only one factor in this decision.

How can we go on a trash "diet" if we don't have our goal "weight"?

Thank you for any actual numbers you can provide.


 

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