Recycling rate slows in Dutchess County, New York

The increased activity began with the closure of the county’s dual-stream material recovery facility (MRF) and the installation of a single-stream MRF in Beacon, New York, operated by ReCommunity, Charlotte, North Carolina, in January 2012. The county’s recycling rate has since jumped from 22.9 percent in 2010 to 36.4 percent as of 2015. The county hopes to expand the recycling rate to 60 percent by 2022. 

 

“When you make it easier for people, they seem to recycle more,” Lindsay Carlie, head of the county’s division of solid waste management, told the newspaper. 

 

According to the newspaper, ReCommunity separates materials into eight marketable commodities:

These commodities are sold to mills and other distributors, as determined by current market conditions. 

 

“What is not working is due to the carelessness or the uninformed actions on the part of consumers,” Kathy O’Connor, chairwoman of the materials management committee of the League of Women Voters of the Mid-Hudson Region, told the Journal. “We don’t need to schlep it. We don’t need to burn it. We need to process it and return it to the earth.”