MRF Operators Face Definable Issues

Current issues in the MRF business, then, are mostly not fundamental issues, but ones that could impact operations and economics in this later stage of their development. This article covers three of those issues.

•Some state legislatures passed bottle bills, or container redemption laws, in the 1970s while the nascent concept of recycling was being developed. Supporters intended to reduce litter – a noble cause – and yet bottle bills hamper the progress of recycling by decreasing the volume and value of curbside collected recyclables. Are these laws and the justifications used to support them out of date?

•The scrap textile industry has been around as long as textile manufacturing. As was true for other curbside-collected recyclables before curb service, the capture rate of used clothing is not high because of the inconvenience to the resident. Residents with used clothing must currently find their own collection points. Adding textiles to curbside collection programs will increase recovery as it has for other household scrap materials.

•Glass aggregate, a byproduct of recycling collection and processing, has existed since the late eighties. Production of a quality aggregate dramatically reduces a MRF’s process residue rate. However, markets for this legitimate, albeit low-value, recycled product have not developed as much as we would hope nor consistently from state to state. This is partly the fault of slow state government acceptance of the material in road and building material specifications.

ARE BOTTLE BILLS OUT OF DATE?

The container redemption system currently exists in some form in ten states. The retailer makes a per bottle deposit when the retailer buys from the wholesaler. In return the consumer makes a per bottle deposit when the consumer buys from the retailer. The consumer can then redeem the deposit from the wholesaler or retailer via a specialized material handling system concocted specifically to redeem empty deposit containers.

The success of these programs is hard to document, but certainly many people hold the opinion that the bottle bills have reduced litter, created jobs and saved energy. What is easier to document and argue are the problems that these bottle bills have created:

•Decreased sales due to higher cost of product.

•Loss of spendable income by residents, who lose their deposit unless they redeem the container.  The bottling and distribution industry keeps $60 million per year in deposit money in New York.

•Wasted time in returning containers for their deposits; cost of handling and storing them at redemption facilities and transportation to processing facilities; and administrative work involved in tracking the quantity and type of containers returned.

•Decreased profitability of MRF operations due to the decrease in the value of curbside collected recyclables.

Bottle bills reduce the volume of aluminum, PET and glass containers in the mix of commingled bottles and cans. Not only do curbside collection programs lose volume, but programs lose the relatively high valued aluminum cans and PET bottles. This means that if states repeal bottle bills, rates for tipping will improve and recycling will become more cost competitive with solid waste disposal. Existing data on MRF operations shows this in simple terms. The weighted average revenue per ton of product sold for commingled containers in a bottle bill state is about $60/ton vs. $90 in a non-bottle bill state. The difference of $30/ton in value makes a big difference in tip fees and the MRF’s bottom line.

Repeal of bottle bills would result in smaller municipal recycling budgets and could increase capture rates for all recyclables.

There are some arguments made in favor of bottle bills.

•Bottle bills support the poor by providing an opportunity to earn income through collection and redemption of litter.

Poverty is a problem. If we were starting from ground zero and a policy analyst was to propose a bottle bill to help improve the lives of the poor, that recommendation would be absurd. Why is it any more sensible to defend the existing bottle bill with the same argument? It is not.

•If the state repealed the bottle bill, there would be undoubtedly fewer beer and soda cans recycled.

Quoting the Federation of New York Solid Waste Associations’ press release dated Sept. 26, 1997, the return rate for deposit containers in New York State is 75 percent. In non-bottle bill states recycling programs receive 70 percent of these materials. This shows that the capture rates are not necessarily enhanced by bottle bills.

•If the state repealed the bottle bill, more litter would result.

This is the only argument in favor of bottle bills that has a logical foundation. How much impact on litter has the bottle bill really had? We know of no empirical studies although many people hold strong opinions. Arguing in favor of repealing those laws, the bottle bills were legislated when curbside recycling programs were in their infancy. “Recycling” has since become a household word, and many more citizens are environmentally responsible then twenty years ago. (Admittedly, many still are not.) One would expect fewer people to consider littering acceptable behavior than in the 1970s.

Furthermore, bottle bills apply only to a portion of the sources of litter. If the bottle bill concept is effective at all in reducing litter, is the benefit of this limited success greater than the costs listed above? We expect that debates about the bottle bills in coming years will answer “no” to this question. The Federation of New York Solid Waste Associations examined that very question at a December 9 symposium entitled “Sense or Cents – A Symposium on Returnable Beverage Containers.”

TEXTILES: A PROVEN COMMODITY

Textiles have been recycled since their inception. Today, recyclers ship textiles overseas for use as second-hand clothing, cut textiles for the rag industry, or use them in combination with other materials such as fiber to make new products. The market is reliable and diverse and there is opportunity for growth. According to our experience, there is more demand than supply.

Today, although residential disposal of clothing is the main source of scrap textiles, the collection of textiles remains largely outside the realm of curbside collection programs around the country. Most residents must transport their own used clothing to drop-off boxes. As most recycling planners know, participation in a program is low when collection is limited to drop off stations.

From our perspective as an intermediate processor, textile recycling is creeping into the municipalities the option to add bagged textiles to their commingled residential paper stream at most of our MRFs, we have received few interested queries. The experience of our company, Resource Recovery Systems Inc., Centerbrook, Conn., at our Ann Arbor, Mich. MRF proves that we can economically collect textiles at curbside in the commingled paper stream, recover textiles at the MRF, and add market textiles to the textile recycling industry.

The textile recycling industry and recycling advocates should lobby for this valuable scrap material to be included in curbside collection programs. Fortunately, there are some forward thinking communities such as Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Mich., that have recently added textiles to their curbside collection programs. We only wish more would join this trend so that fewer textiles end up in the landfill.

Specifications can be simple: Textiles collected are fabric, clothing, shoes (in pairs) or textiles made of natural or man-made materials, bagged separately in sealed plastic bags. Textiles must be absolutely clean and dry. Textiles should be set out in sealed plastic bags and commingled with the recyclable paper stream.

Commingled paper streams usually consist of newspaper, magazines, junk mail, office paper, corrugated cardboard and other cardboard. The addition of textiles increases the average per ton value of the commingled paper stream. Haulers incur little or no additional curbside collection costs since the limit of two recyclables streams is maintained. The value of the textiles covers the costs of recovery at the MRF, so tipping fees will not worsen for haulers and municipalities. 

GOVERNMENT SPONSORSHIP OF RECYCLED PRODUCTS: THE EXAMPLE OF AGGREGATE

Early MRF designers did not intend for mixed color glass aggregate to be a product of MRF operations. But soon after the development of the first MRFs, high process residue rates, primarily from broken glass, forced MRF operators and recycling coordinators to examine how to reduce the percentage of residue through higher recovery of glass. To our knowledge, the Department of Streets in New York City and RRS were among the first to team up to tackle this problem in the mid 1980s. RRS was already producing furnace-ready cullet, so we adapted the process to handle broken unsortable glass. RRS produced a clean aggregate glass product of predictable sieve size, and the Department of Streets mixed it into its asphalt for street paving.

Based on this success, RRS adapted its other MRFs to aggregate processing and made it an integral part of all new MRFs. In spite of this development, progress on accepting this material as a substitute for stone and sand in construction projects (including glassphalt applications) has not been as swift as we hoped nor consistent from state to state. Connecticut and New York are examples of the contrast.

In Connecticut, DOT approved limited use of aggregate in road construction in 1993 after a lengthy lobbying effort by recyclers. But the DEP said no one could stockpile more than 10 yards without a solid waste transfer station permit. In 1993 grassroots recyclers brought together the DEP, Connecticut Resource Recovery Authority, private individuals and companies to clear this hurdle. As a result, the DEP approved aggregate use in certain secondary applications that earned a beneficial use determination (BUD). But the DEP went on to create blending and permitting requirements that effectively kept the barriers in place. In a nutshell, state government inertia has forced recyclers to look outside the state for markets.

In New York, the state early on established beneficial status for several applications of aggregate. The state requires no special permitting beyond the MRF permit or license. As expected, municipal government followed the State’s lead. Columbia County provides an excellent example of municipal use of a recycled product. The County has adopted state specifications for aggregate use, and the department of public works uses all of the aggregate produced at its local MRF, operated by RRS, for County projects.

Consider that if state transportation departments actually specified preferred use of aggregate in road building projects, aggregate would earn a positive value for recyclers rather than being sold for $0 or even less on the market. This would contribute a great de4al to the profitability of MRF operations and encourage more MRF operators to produce a quality aggregate product. More glass would be recycled.

There is already precedent for this kind of government sponsorship: standards for minimum recycled content in office paper purchases by government departments and preference for higher recycled content applied to the bids for paper products.

Bill Leonidas is director of marketing for Resource Recovery Systems Inc., Centerbrook, Connecticut.