Connecticut trash haulers have been spotted mixing recyclables with trash, in trucks or at transfer stations, to save money.
WSHU’s Davis Dunavin spoke with CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas to discuss his article, “Is CT recycling going into the trash? Some haulers caught in the act,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short.
WSHU: You say some of Connecticut residents recycling has been going in the trash. Tell us how you found that out.
MP: So the quasi-public authority that used to run a trash to energy plant in Hartford, they're still in business, they collect waste and recycling from towns and they have contractual obligations to make sure certain levels of waste are delivered to places they contract to have it go to, and the same is true of recycling. And they noticed at one of their transfer stations in Essex, that the amount of waste had dropped precipitously, so they sent some trash cops out there. They actually have a staff of four people, who, when the need arises, will go out and they will follow garbage trucks and recycling trucks and put them under surveillance. And they observed recycling bins being emptied into trash trucks.
And then the other issue, it's a little bit more esoteric. It's the legal principle of flow control, which means these haulers are contracted to bring the trash and recyclables to certain facilities. And what they found was some of the haulers were bringing the stuff elsewhere where they could get rid of it a little bit cheaper. But again, it was in violation of a contract.
Now the big picture here is when it comes to flow control, which you know, listeners may wonder like, why do we care where it goes, as long as it's appropriately taken care of. The bigger issue is the state of Connecticut right now is poised to look at the new generation of waste disposal technology. And one of the fundamental pieces of any system you do is, whatever the state decides on, whether it's a new generation of waste to energy plants, you need to guarantee a certain flow of tonnage to these places. So, in short, trash is the equivalent of money in this world of recycling and disposing of trash.
WSHU: So why would they do that? Why would these waste haulers be mixing trash and recycling?
MP: Well, MIRA is the quasi-public authority, the Materials Innovation and Resource Authority. They speculate that there's a couple things going on here. Some of these are smaller haulers on some residential routes. And the speculation is, in some cases, it's just cheaper to have one truck go out than to have a separate truck. In other cases, it can be cheaper, depending on the commodity prices of recyclables. It can be cheaper in some parts of the state, they say, to actually dump the recyclables in with the trash. This typically is not the case because after they’re sorted, the recyclables can be sold as commodities, and that offsets the price of getting rid of them. But that seems to be what's going on.
The other thing that kind of came out of this story is the fact that the state Department of Energy and Environmental really doesn't have much of an enforcement and aren't looking at this kind of thing. They have a small field compliance staff that's also responsible for enforcing hazardous waste laws. And you know, that gets a priority over whether or not the blue bin stuff has gone to the right place as opposed to keeping track of how hazardous waste is being handled in the state of Connecticut.
WSHU: And you also mentioned that the future of MIRA is uncertain. Why is that?
MP: Well, because its primary reason for existing is the trash energy plant in the south Meadows which closed last July. It still has contracts with a couple dozen municipalities to process the trash so they still have two transfer stations and the trash from there, since they no longer have a disposal facility, some of it goes to a smaller burn plant in Preston, Connecticut. And then the rest of it gets shipped out of state, mainly to Pennsylvania.
So eventually this thing is going to go out of business. Because again, there is no reason for it to exist. There is a bill before the General Assembly that would create a Waste Authority as kind of a transitional entity that would take charge of the abandoned trash to energy plant in Hartford, because you know, there's a lot of cleanup that needs to go on there. This has been a place where waste has been going for a long time, and there's certainly some issues there and it will be of some expense.
So this is part of a larger story that's unfolding in Connecticut, about the Lamont administration wanting to push the state into a new direction that would help it reduce and perhaps eventually eliminate the need to send trash out of state. The current projections are, there's going to be about 860,000 tons of trash from Connecticut that are going to end up in Ohio and Pennsylvania, either by truck or by rail. And the administration wants the state to be more self-sufficient. But exactly how do you do that? I mean, some of it is they will try to divert trash from the waste stream. You know, there's a proposal to mandate the separation of food scraps and other organic items and have them processed in kinetic compost and other things.
There is again, also, this idea of what's the next generation of technology. Whether it's a new round of waste to energy plants that incinerate trash and generate electricity, or its there something else. There are gasification plants that produce fuels, there's anaerobic digesters that take these food scraps and other organics and turn it into compost, and they also generate gas that can be turned into fuels. So all that stuff is in the works right now. So this story about where the recyclables end up, where they belong, is really part of a bigger puzzle that the administration is trying to put together here about what trash collection, trash disposal and recycling will look like over the next decade or so.
WSHU: And on that, on that question of, you know, what's going on with all the recyclables, you say that MIRA wants the attorney general to pursue this case in court. What's going on with that?
MP: The authority believes that the Attorney General's Office would quite frankly have more weight in court. These would be civil actions. The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protections and the municipalities have the right to go to court to basically enforce their contracts that are being violated, as well as state laws, about how you are supposed to handle recycling. So MIRA makes the case that they don't have to do it. They haven't said no yet, but they haven't said yes either. And that's where it was over the weekend.
