A pile of unsorted recyclables awaits handling at Casella's material recovery facility in Rutland. Photo by CB Hall
by Michele Morris, the Director of Outreach and Communications at Chittenden Solid Waste DistrictSingle-stream recycling has been known by many names: “all in one,” “commingled,” “No Sort” and “Zero Sort,” but all of them mean the same thing: You don’t have to sort your cardboard, glass bottles, aluminum cans, and other recyclables into separate bins. Just put them all in the same bin or cart, and the single-stream system will sort them for you.
Single-stream recycling came to Vermont in 2003, when the Chittenden Solid Waste District (CSWD) invested $2.1 million to convert its ten-year-old dual-stream Materials Recovery Facility—called a “murf” (MRF) in the industry—to single-stream. More recently, Casella Waste, Inc. opened a single-stream MRF in Rutland to serve the southern half of the state. The vast majority of Vermont’s “blue bin” recyclables are processed through these two facilities.
In principle, MRFs perform a single function: They sort your recycling. Specialized machinery and human workers operate side-by-side to separate like materials and bale them for sale on global markets. A MRF sorts the items you toss into your recycling bin, cart or dumpster both by type AND by shape. The machinery is engineered to move 2-dimensional items like paper and cardboard onto one conveyor, and 3-dimensional items like plastic bottles and metal cans onto another. At the Vermont MRFs, magnets pull off steel cans and other ferrous items, while human sorters separate plastic items by the type of material they’re made from.
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Though the Casella and CSWD MRFs have always accepted essentially the same items, they recently agreed to synchronize their messaging.
Also, in 2015, baseline requirements for what must be recycled by everyone across Vermont kicked in under Act 148. Local rules may still vary, though, and some Districts mandate that more than the baseline statewide items must be recycled.
Contact your solid waste management entity to learn the local rules. Links and phone numbers for every Vermont town are available at www.802recycles.com.
Here’s a baseline of the minimum rules required by law no matter where in the Green Mountain State your recycling bin, cart or dumpster lives:
• ALL items must be empty and clean. Paper and cardboard must also be kept dry.
• Items must be made from a single material. That means no laminated paper, no food containers made of a boxboard body and a metal bottom, etc.
• Items must never have contained any paint or poison.
Beyond that, here’s what goes in the bin:
Paper: Uncoated, clean and dry paper such as office paper, newspaper, magazines, junk mail. But NOT: Paper towels or facial tissues.
Glass bottles & jars: Empty and clean beverage bottles and food jars. But NOT: Window panes, drink glasses, or other miscellaneous glass items.
Cardboard: Clean and dry boxes of all kinds that are uncoated and flattened. But NOT: Plastic-coated boxes, ice cream tubs, or soup/juice/milk cartons.
Metal cans & foil: Empty and clean food and drink cans, aerosol cans, “disposable” aluminum pie plates and trays, balled foil. But NOT: Paint cans, or any cans that contained poisons (like pesticides or other chemicals designed to kill).
Plastic containers & packaging: Clean, empty, single-use rigid bottles, jugs and packaging only. But NOT: Bags or other filmy plastic of any kind, no Styrofoam, no black plastic, no durable plastics of any kind.
Still not sure? Check your District’s website (see 802recycles.com), or give them a call. And by all means, don’t practice “wishful recycling.” When the wrong materials make it to the MRF, they have to be hand-sorted by people who analyze fast-moving material —up to 200 tons every day!—to make sure each item gets to the correct bale. At best, your mistakes slow the system, reduce the marketability of all recycling, and even cause shutdowns to unwrap bags and other “tanglers” that jam the sorting machinery. At worst, your incorrect choices can imperil workers by exposing them to dangerous and hazardous materials.
Go to www.cswd.net/learn to sign up or request a tour of the CSWD MRF in Williston. Contact Joseph Soulia at 802-772-2273 or [email protected] for tours of Casella’s MRF in Rutland.