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FOOD WASTE RECYCLING REMAINS A TOUGH TASK IN CONNECTICUT

July 10, 2014

Bridgewater — With a shout of “BLT!” as lunchtime peaks at the historic Bridgewater Village Store, chef Damian Krieg is doing pretty much the same thing he’s done for more than seven years – cranking out sandwiches, dishing up fresh soups and serving a changing array of specials.

But there is one difference, nearly imperceptible as he finishes making a king-size bowl of cole slaw during the increasingly infrequent lulls in the action. For the last three months, instead of dumping the cores of the cabbage and onions, ends of the carrots and the guts of the green peppers into the trash with everything else, he has been dropping them into a bucket beneath his workstation.

It’s his new compost bucket – part of a first-in-the-state curbside food waste pickup project in this largely rural southwestern Connecticut town.

“Anything that is biodegradable goes into the compost heap. You could even use paper which is biodegradable,” Krieg says. “The baker uses one upstairs and just before she leaves she brings her bag down here. We combine them with that. Sometimes we do have to empty them twice day.”

That means dumping them into a larger barrel behind the store. That barrel stays locked to keep critters and other undesirables out until its contents are picked up every Friday and taken a few miles away to the New Milford Farms compost facility where they will be made into soil products.

Simple? In theory, yes. But Connecticut’s efforts to wrench itself off the 25 percent recycling rate it has been stuck on for years (by doing things like finding other ways to handle its largest component – the one-third that is food waste and other organics) has been a slow go. Law changes in 2011 that mandated recycling large volume commercial food waste have been tough to implement.

So Connecticut lags as other states, as well as large cities like New York, San Francisco and Toronto, and many areas in Europe, are well into food waste disposal programs.

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Murphy Road Recycling Receives Gold for All American MRF Glass Certification

March 27, 2024

The Glass Recycling Coalition (GRC) announced Murphy Road Recycling as a recipient of a gold-level certification for its All American material recovery facility (MRF) in Berlin, Connecticut. The approximately $40 million single-stream MRF started operations in 2022 and features a state-of-the-art processing system that includes optical sorters, artificial intelligence, and robotics supplied by Van Dyk Recycling Solutions. The All American MRF also uses glass cleaning equipment including a glass breaker, vibrating table screen, secondary fines screen, and vacuum system. The MRF sends its clean glass to processors that convert the material into cullet used for manufacturing glass containers, fine powders that are used in fiberglass insulation, and ground glass used as pozzolan (a cement binder). Read the full article on wasteadvantagemag.com.

SOLID WASTE: RECYCLING AND THE HOLIDAYS: JOY OF THE SEASON TO YOU, YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS.

December 21, 2023

Happy Holidays to all and a very fun filled New Year. How to make recycling simple and easy to understand for (circular economy reuse) holiday wrapping, packaging, and entertainment waste. All paper can be recycled EXCEPT if it has glitter, or imprinted with shiny metallic like materials, if it reflects light, do not recycle. Plastics with a neck and certainly nothing that is made up of multi-layers (laminates). All the ribbon, bows, plastic film, foam packaging go into the trash bin. Imagine standing over a picking line and the objective is to sort the most reusable and best quality materials. There are end markets for quality cardboard (OCC), mixed wastepaper (everything paper other than OCC, except the shiny metallic wrapping paper), Plastics #1, #2 and #5 (water bottles, detergent bottles, and yogurt cups) and all metal cans (food and beverage) should be recycled. Put items in the recycling cart separated and loose not in a bag or box and all items should be clean and dry. Recycle Paper gift wrap and envelopes that are plain (multi-color and images ok) and non-laminated: o No glitter. o No metal or shinny surfaces - if it can reflect light put it in the trash. o No laminates - multi-layered - most flexible food/candy packaging. Boxes: o Cardboard and paper boxes - ideally flattened out and remove the tape and Styrofoam peanuts and plastic air-pocket packing material. Bottles Plastic - look on the bottom of a bottle, if it shows the number: 1, 2 and 5 get recycled. o Rinsed and cleaned plastic with a neck - water, detergent, beverage (PET - #1 and HDPE - #2). o Plastic bottles without a neck - yogurt, cottage cheese not Keurig cups it has metal foil (polypropylene - PP - #5). Cans o Steel - food, soup, fruit, and vegetables. o Aluminum - beer, soda, specialty drinks. Bottles Glass: o Wine, champagne, beer. Trash Ribbons, bows, and decorations (Christmas lights, garland). Packing materials: o Bubble wrap, plastic films wrapped around a toy or gift, cellophane wrapping paper. o Foam - peanuts or Styrofoam. o Plastic air-filled packing materials. Plastic o Plastic bottles without a neck with non-plastic seals - Keurig cups. o All film - dry cleaner bags, grocery bags, cellophane wrapping paper, plastic wrapped presents. o Laminated plastics - food packaging any plastic that is clearly multi-layered is mixing too many chemistries to be recycled in a post-consumer system. o Forks, utensils, straws. Food waste - if you do not have home composting, it all goes into the trash.