Through the rest of the summer, the Solid Waste Department will continue to collect yard waste at four of the solid waste convenience centers (not Bradshaw Quarry Road) and at the landfill, and offer the red mulch and compost products at $28 per cubic yard. We load your truck or trailer, but make sure to bring a tarp to cover your load.
We are happy to report that the big blue Petersen Pacific grinder is up and running again and the large stockpile of yard waste is now ground up and going through the curing process that will make it ready for sale as mulch in about 45 days. Freshly ground yard waste is not suitable for immediate application because the nitrogen in the "green" material like leaves isn't fixed and can chemically burn the plants. After a curing period during which the mulch heats up to more than 130 degrees, the nitrogen is fixed. We will notify the public when it is for sale ready again.
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This year's 31st annual Eno River Festival, for which Orange County Solid Waste provided cup, bucket, can, bottle, paper and cardboard recycling services, is projected to once again be more than 95 percent trash-free (final data not yet in!). Eno River Association's diligence in not only recycling and composting at the staffed trash stations, but advance planning with its vendors to avoid non-compostable, non-recyclable materials has brought it our title of "Mother of Trash-Free Festivals." Ongoing kudos to Greg Bell, festival organizer.
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This year's 28th annual Hog Day festival in Hillsborough June 18 and 19 showed it is well along the path towards trash-freeness, too. A diverse group of volunteers and recycling assistants, led by Orange County Solid Waste Department's Muriel Williman, captured an estimated 19,000 cans and bottles plus 2 carts full of plastic cups #2 and #5. Staff even grabbed five pounds of polyethylene bags that had held buns and ice. Fifteen carts of food and compostable wet paper were also diverted and shipped down to the county's food waste composting contractor Brooks Contractor in Goldston.
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On campus this summer, the whole Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling pitched in to help make its Summer Splash for employees a Zero Waste event. The results are: 525 gallons of compost, 240 gallons of recycling (bottles, cans, aluminum trays, cardboard and plastic film) and only 10 gallons of trash! That's almost a 99 percent diversion rate -- Special thanks to Natalia Posthill and Kenneth Bryan for assisting in compost bin monitoring, and to Pat Langelier, Frankford Johnson and Laura Corin for separating the food line waste.
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The world of plastics recycling continues to change and also continues to perplex many of us. Here are responses to recent questions from the public. We thank local plastics recycling expert Nina Bellucci Butler of Moore Recycling for her help in responding.
Q: "Why can't we recycle the #1 PET non-bottle plastics in the purple dropoff Dumpsters with the #2 and #5's?"
A: With bottles, more than 96 percent are either #1 or #2, but with non-bottle rigid plastic there is more variation in the types of plastics used. PET trays and cups are different from bottles (lower viscosity when melted) but the greater concern for PET bottle reclaimers in accepting this material is the risk that they might end up with other plastics that look like PET trays or PET cups such as PVC #3, PS #6, or bioplastic PLA sometimes labeled as #7).
Not only do they look like PET, they sink during the critical float/sink processing phase like PET. Other resins -- PP #5, HDPE #2, LDPE #4 -- float. These other sinking plastics have a different melt temperature than PET and therefore small amounts can create serious problems. Finally, those buying the mixed #2 and #5 loads have no use for #1 and there is almost no market for non-bottle #1 PET in this country right now.
Another challenge is the fact that there isn't a lot of material by weight so it takes a long time to accumulate a 20-ton load for market. Since much of this material contains food residue there is the challenge of storing rotting food.
Some #1 PET packaging is made WITH recycled PET -- look for those when making your purchases as that supports recycling markets, too, and sends the right message to producers to "complete the recycling cycle."
Q: What about the compostable plastics such as the PLA and those so-called "oxo biodegradable plastics" that break conventional plastics into tiny fragments using the additive OXO, an oxidizing degrading agent? Do those products make ecological sense?
A: Let's take one at a time. There is a place for the use of PLA (#7 Polylactic Acid) containers like cups or utensils when they can be put into a commercial composting process, where those exist -- like the ones in nearby Chatham County -- Brooks or McGill composting. Even there it takes several compost cycles to achieve full breakdown.
Using PLA corn-based cups or other compostable utensils then NOT composting them, is a waste of good corn or wheat or potatoes and the resources used to make them into compostable plastics. Most landfills, including the one here in Orange County, are designed to prevent decomposition. PLA and other compostables will not break down your conventional backyard compost bin.
PLA should never be used to make beverage bottles. That wrecks the recycling process for these valuable containers, and it is extremely difficult for consumers to tell the difference between a PLA bottle and a PET one.
Using OXO chemical additives to break down conventional plastic creates three problems -- using them in conventional plastics makes those plastics unstable and less valuable in recycling -- they are being engineered to break down where you want stability, thus they are antithetical to recycling. They are not compostable -- they just make the plastic particles smaller thus more easily washed into the soil or the ocean. Finally, they send the wrong message, something like -- "See this plastic object made with a degrading agent? Well now it's OK to throw it on the ground or in the ocean, because it will "degrade."
You can learn more from reading these two short papers:
n http://www.mirelplastics.com/imagesupl/European_Bioplastics_OxoPositionPaper.pdf
n http://www.napcor.com/pdf/APR_DegradableStmnt.pdf
Blair L. Pollock is Orange County solid waste planner.
