Three Bills Stand To Reinvigorate New Jersey Recycling Attempts

New Jersey began exploring ways to reignite enthusiasm for recycling after watching the practice fade badly in this the first state to begin mandated recycling back in 1987.

"We need to take action quickly," said State Sen. Bob Smith, D-Middlesex, adding landfills face maximum capacity and are oozing hazardous and nonbiodegradable materials.

Smith is chairman of the Senate Environmental Committee, which took testimony on three bills.

One bill would charge people $3 per ton of solid waste hauled from their curb or factory.

A second requires rigid plastic containers to be made with a 25 percent portion of recycled materials. The third says makers, importers and sellers of electronics must create a recycling process for those items.

Aides to Bradley L. Campbell, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, spoke in favor of the three pieces of legislation.

"Each of these bills, if enacted, would support different aspects of the framework outlined in the draft update to the Statewide Solid-Waste Management Plan to bring our recycling rates back to where they should be," said Gary Sondermeyer, Campbell's chief of staff.

He said in 1995, New Jersey recycled 45 percent of its municipal waste. "By 2003, this rate had fallen to only 33 percent," Sondermeyer said.

Though recycling is law, scattered authorities in New Jersey have enforced it. Thursday morning, the hearing room in the Statehouse Annex filled with lobbyists and interested parties.

Steve Changaris of the National Solid-Waste Management Association, representing the industry, asked how a hauler can fairly charge an individual homeowner, or factory manager, when the hauler may collect a morning's worth of trash before weighing his load — and arriving at the $3-per-ton bill he owes — at a transfer station.

"One neighbor could have trash that is heavy and wet. The next-door person could put out feathers. How do you figure who gets charged what?" Changaris asked.

Smith said the transfer station would send the money to the state, which would return it to the municipalities and counties to help pay for recycling and education.

Backers of the bill say it would raise $34 million a year. It is unclear how much of that would be siphoned off by the project's bureaucracy.

Michael Egenton, assistant vice president of the State Chamber of Commerce, said he believed bureaucracy would soak up 40 percent, and he urged the lawmakers "conduct a detailed analysis of the potential economic impact on the business community."

Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club environmental group, favors the measures, arguing recycling would save taxpayers an estimated $90 million because New Jersey would no longer be loading some 100,000 dump trucks a year and sending them to Pennsylvania, and paying $54 a ton in "tipping fees" to "tip" the trucks' loads into landfills in that state.

Hal Bozarth, director of the Chemistry Council of New Jersey, said the haulers will pass through all charges they pay at transfer stations to consumers.

Smith countered that would not be too much of a burden, maybe $4 a year.

Michael Formica, owner of Q-Pak, a Newark manufacturer of plastic jugs employing up to 27 people, said the law mandating recycled materials in his jugs would put him out of business.

Assemblyman Peter Barnes, D-Middlesex, though not a member of the committee, attended the session, saying he wants manufacturers to be responsible for electronics gear landing in New Jersey dumps. Asbury Park (New Jersey)Press