• By the end of 2015, nearly all (99.9 percent) of the recycling facilitated by ELI’s participants was conducted in third-party-certified recycling facilities. 
• More than 8,300 responsible recycling locations are now available to consumers throughout the United States. 
• In partnership with Young Minds Inspired, CTA produced and distributed school curriculum programs on ecycling in English and Spanish for fourth through sixth grade classes;
• According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) most recent report on municipal solid waste, CE products are now the fastest-declining product category for both waste generation and disposal.
   

Hartford, Connecticut, is home to an aging waste-to-energy (WTE) plant, which is prompting policy makers to consider what will come next.

According to a Hartford Courant online article by reporter Gregory B. Hladaky, the city’s leaders are aware they will likely face NIMBY (not in my back yard) and fiscal policy confrontation whatever path they choose.

Some one-third of all the municipal solid waste (MSW) generated in Connecticut goes to the WTE plant, which at 27 years old the Courant describes as “aging.”

According to the article, state agencies are “currently reviewing private industry proposals for creating a more modern system focusing on recycling, composting and bio-energy rather than incineration.” For any of those plans to come to fruition, however, several stakeholders and constituencies will have to reach agreement.

Marian Chertow, the director of a Yale University program on solid waste policy, is quoted in the Courant as saying, “There's always NIMBY,” adding that people in Hartford and surrounding cities are unlikely to want a landfill, transfer station, WTE facility, anaerobic digestion (AD) facility or even a recycling plant near them. “"People make lots of waste but they don't want to put it anywhere close by," she adds.

Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin says one of the options includes a new, “cleaner” facility at the 80-acre site of the current WTE site. However, that parcel of land is on Hartford’s riverfront and is considered desirable by property developers and economic development officials.

Among other considerations are a 2014 law that sets a goal of the recycling or reuse of 60 percent of the state’s MSW by 2024. Currently, of the materials brought to the Hartford WTE facility and an adjacent recycling plant, slightly more than 20 percent of it is being recycled, according to an official quoted in the article.

As proposals for a new MSW and recycling system are received, “The plan is to winnow down those proposals to just three top contenders, and release the names of the companies and details of their proposals by July or August [2016],” according to Hladaky.
 

The city government of Dothan, Alabama, is taking steps to move forward with a landfill expansion project despite hurdles that include a civil rights lawsuit from some nearby residents.

According to an online article by the Dothan Eagle newspaper, the city is preparing to “put construction of the landfill out for bid within a couple of months.”

The landfill expansion has been met with legal action from nearby residents, according to the article. “An environmental civil rights complaint against the Alabama Department of Environmental Management over its issuance of the permit that [approved] the Dothan landfill expansion is still active and there is no timetable on a resolution,” says the Eagle.

The complaint stems from a group of African-American residents who live near the Dothan landfill who say the current location is discriminatory. As summarized by Eagle reporter Lance Griffin, “Residents who live near the landfill have complained of a bad odor, buzzards circulating through neighborhoods and other hazards. They [say] the landfill has existed in their part of the city for a long time, and that it is time for the landfill to be built in another part of the city.”

The pending complaint does not act as a legal barrier for Dothan’s city government to move forward with its plan, however. For the nearby residents to halt the project they will likely need to find a federal judge who chooses to “issue injunctive relief” as a legal remedy.

According to the news report, Dothan officials considered hauling municipal solid waste to a more distant landfill or investing in a waste-to-energy plant, but found those options to be costlier.