Northeast Resource Recovery Association1-800-223-0150 info@nrra.net Mike Durfor – Executive Director

A Recycling Non-ProfitWorking Together to Make Recycling Strong!

About Us

Working Together to Make Recycling Strong!

In 1981, four New Hampshire municipalities founded the Northeast Resource Recovery Association, then called the New Hampshire Resource Recovery Association, to provide a clearinghouse for current, up-to-date information and a source of technical and marketing assistance in the general areas of waste reduction and recycling.

RECYCLING 2016 * Waste Stream and Market Changes

* Industry Reactions

* Education Needs and Outreach

Single Stream Specifications:

RECYCLABLES shall be dry, loose, not bagged, and include only the following:

Aluminum food and beverage containers - empty Glass food and beverage containers – brown, clear, or green - empty

Ferrous (Iron) cans – empty PET plastic containers with the symbol #1 – with screw tops only -

empty

HDPE natural plastic containers with the symbol

#2 (milk and water bottles) – empty

HDPE pigmented plastic containers with the symbol #2 (detergent,

shampoo bottles, etc.) - empty

Plastics with symbols #3, #4, #5, #6, #7 – empty Newsprint

Old corrugated containers Magazines, glossy inserts and pamphlets

Catalogs Cereal boxes; detergent, gift and snack boxes

Telephone books Printer paper

Copier paper Mail

All other office paper without wax liners

RECYCLABLES do not include the following (“Non-Recyclables”):

Bagged materials (even if containing Recyclables) Microwave trays

Mirrors Window or auto glass

Light Bulbs Ceramics

Porcelain Plastics unnumbered

Plastic bags, expanded polystyrene Coat hangers

Glass cookware/bakeware Household items such as cooking pots, toasters, etc.

Flexible packaging and multi-laminated materials Wet fiber

Excluded Materials Fiber containing, or that has been in contact with, food debris

Any recyclable materials, or pieces of recyclable

materials, less than 2” in size in any dimension

Materials: (a) that contain chemical or other properties deleterious,

or capable of causing material damage, to any part of Company's

property, its personnel or the public; and/or (b) that may

materially impair the strength or the durability of the Company's

structures or equipment.

Orange County, N.C., which includes Chapel Hill, was making about $500,000 a year by selling its recyclables to a company called Sonoco. But as commodity prices have fallen, so, too, have the prices that Sonoco can offer local governments. Starting this month, Sonoco will not pay Orange County anything for the mixed paper, plastics and metals it collects

Last year, the city government in Washington, D.C., paid Waste Management $1.37 million to accept the recyclables it collected from residents. That represented a stark reversal from 2011, when the district earned $550,000 for sending the company roughly the same amount of material.

San Antonio made $305,000 from collecting and selling 87,600 tons of recycling last year. That was far less than the $5.2 million the city made in 2011, but it was better than the alternative. Sending those recyclables to landfill would have cost San Antonio $2.1 million last year.

And Waste Management, the biggest recycler in the country, has reduced the number of recycling facilities it operates to about 100, from 130, over the last two years, resulting in the loss of 900 jobs.

Over the last three quarters, revenues from recycling operations are down 16 percent from the same time a year earlier, to $878 million from just over $1 billion.

“The recycling industry is being hit dramatically by falling commodity and oil prices,” said Michael Taylor, vice president for international trade at the Society of the Plastics Industry. “A real fear now is that recycling rates might go down. That would be a horrible situation.”

“The Reign of Recycling” By JOHN TIERNEY, October 3, 2015

If you live in the United States, you probably do some form of recycling. It’s likely that you separate paper from plastic and glass and metal. You rinse the bottles and cans, and you might put food scraps in a container destined for a composting facility. As you sort everything into the right bins, you probably assume that recycling is helping your community and protecting the environment. But is it? Are you in fact wasting your time?

In 1996, I wrote a long article for The New York Times Magazine arguing that the recycling process as we carried it out was wasteful. I presented plenty of evidence that recycling was costly and ineffectual, but its defenders said that it was unfair to rush to judgment. Noting that the modern recycling movement had really just begun just a few years earlier, they predicted it would flourish as the industry matured and the public learned how to recycle properly.

Despite decades of exhortations and mandates, it’s still typically more expensive for municipalities to recycle household waste than to send it to a landfill. Prices for recyclable materials have plummeted because of lower oil prices and reduced demand for them overseas. The slump has forced some recycling companies to shut plants and cancel plans for new technologies. The mood is so gloomy that one industry veteran tried to cheer up her colleagues this summer with an article in a trade journal titled, “Recycling Is Not Dead!”

EXAMPLE # B: 1. CHARGES and INVOICING. Invoices will be sent on a monthly schedule and

payment is required within thirty (30) days from invoice date.

Term Acceptable Waste Disposal

Charge Per Ton Delivered to XXXX

Acceptable Recyclable Materials Transportation

Charge Per Ton Delivered to XXXX

Acceptable Recyclable Materials Processing

Charge Per Ton Delivered to XXXX

9/1/15– 6/30/16 $62.00 $35.00 $78.00

7/1/16– 6/30/17 $62.00 $35.50 $79.15

7/1/17– 6/30/18 $62.00 $36.00 $80.35

7/1/18– 6/30/19 $63.00 $37.85 $81.55

7/1/19– 6/30/20 $64.00 $38.45 $82.75

• Given the challenges ahead, the choices are difficult and there are no guarantees.

• The best recommendation is to prepare for the future by recognizing the long term essential need for ……and value of ….recycling infrastructure.

• The only question left is whether your town owns its own infrastructure and controls its destiny or if the private sector steps up and charges market rates for the commodities to move.

• The following is one example of a public facility investment that are now paying dividends.

DOUBLE DOWN ON INFRASTRUCTURE

In Plaquemines Parish, just south of New Orleans, Republic Services decided to double the fees it charged the local government to collect and process recyclables.

The cost was too high, and the parish said it would end its recycling program at the end of this month, only to reverse course after a public outcry led by energetic seventh graders.

MOM and NRRA Workshops

Working Together to Make Recycling Strong!

MOM - Members/Operations/Marketing meetings are held monthly.

In addition. NRRA conducts workshops and facility tours several times a year that can be used for continuing education credits toward transfer facility operator certifications and renewals.

But our planet and future generations depend on it!