April Media Blitz reaches thousands

            The SSRC put the Waste Reduction word into the cars, kitchens and backyards of residents from Boston to the Cape for three weeks in April.  SEMASS' MSP funded 140-one minute radio ads on Hazardous Product Management, Waste Bans, and Composting, which Abington Health Agent Michelle Roberts and Executive Director Claire Sullivan recorded.  They ran on WPLM FM 99.1, WATD FM 95.9, and WJDA AM 1300 for the two weeks until Earth Day. Live interviews included compost bin giveaways with donations from Abington, Cohasset, Hull, Norwell, Quincy and Weymouth. We hope that a lot of people got the message.

            A grant from Mass. DEP covered most of the cost of placing paid "info-torials" in twelve Mariners, the Whitman Express, Duxbury Clipper and Hull Times on the same three topics.  One 12 inch ad ran each of the 3 weeks leading up to Earth Day (April 22).  The grant also included technical assistance from Rosemary Nolan, who coordinated related outreach and giveaways at live local events, including Sustainable South Shore’s Climate InfoFest on 4/23 at Nantasket Beach, and distributed related videos on our local cable stations. 

                        The SSRC is embarking on a partnership with North and South River Watershed Association, which is also doing an outreach campaign for its Greenscapes program, which includes home composting and pesticide reduction.  The Board voted to coordinate 85-30 second radio ads on WATD with them through September.

            To see the print ads online, go to  the link to SSRC in the News.  Lift whatever you want for any other publications that might be interested!

LOCAL

Marshfield hires PT Coordinator

     Yet another Sullivan has joined the local recycling community with the recent hiring of Debbie Sullivan as Marshfield’s half time Recycling Coordinator.  Debbie served on the Town’s Recycling Committee before heading to Florida for a couple of years.  She has her work cut out for her in implementing DPW Director Jeb DeLoache’s ambitious waste reduction ideas.  Debbie is open to making her job full time by filling a similar position in another town, an idea the Executive Director has been encouraging for years.  Savings in disposal costs as a result of her work are bound to pay her salary and then some, both for Marshfield and any other town that has the wisdom to create such a position.

Whitman Town Meeting votes down PAYT

Since August, Whitman officials have sought ways to reduce their high trash costs.  Encouraged by the success of PAYT programs in surrounding towns and the availability of grant funding and assistance by Mass. DEP, DPW Director John Petinelli applied for Technical Assistance and startup cost grants.  As required for the grants, Town Manager Frank Lynam set up the Whitman Solid Waste/Recycling Committee, which has been moderated by Municipal Assistance Coordinators Kathi Mirza and Rosemary Nolan.  SSRC Board Members Tom Burnett, Michelle Roberts and Al Scoglio were all appointed. 

Last month, the Committee presented its re-commendation to the Boards of Selectmen and Health at a public hearing to limit trash collec-tion to one-30 gallon barrel of trash per week from households that pay the $175 annual fee (reduced from this year’s $225 fee), with addi-tional bags costing $2.  The advice was well received at the hearing, but those who stayed late through the second night of Town Meeting were persuaded by some questionable infor-mation to keep the current fee based system.  The annual fee is expected to rise to $250. 

Passage of the measure would have resulted in a lower subsidy from the General Fund, and reduced trash volume by and estimated 20-40. 

Competitors vie for Rockland, Marshfield’s trash

    It’s amazing what a little competition can do.  The new availability of the Bourne Integrated Solid Waste Management Facility (ISWMF) for municipal solid waste (MSW) gave Marshfield and Rockland another option for disposal.  SEMASS’ counter-bid bested Bourne’s proposal for both five-year contracts, at $76.50/ton for FY06, which will save the towns tens of thousands of dollars. Both towns’ disposal contracts expire this June.  Seneca Meadows, NY also bid to extend their disposal/hauling contract with Marshfield.

Holbrook PAYT

slashes trash

     Supervisor of Public Works Ken Brown reports that Holbrook’s disposal rate continues to hover at about 60% of what it was before the implementation of Pay as You Throw (PAYT) last October.  This 40% reduction in waste generation is partially offset by a sharp increase in the recycling rate, and is also attributable to some households opting out of municipal collection service and hiring private haulers.

      PAYT was implemented to cover disposal costs after Town Meeting approved the Finance Committee’s recommendation to reduce the disposal budget by about half for FY05.  Faced with the choice of assessing a flat fee to all households or charging by the bag, the Board of Selectmen voted to support the volume based system.

      Despite the success of the new program, PAYT proponent and SSRC Board member Jeff Lowe lost his bid for re-election to the Board of Selectmen in a low turnout election to an opponent who wished to return to a tax funded trash program.

No more paint in Plymouth

After evaluating costs and options and Ply-mouth Public Works Dept. decided to close its paint shed, which was open one day a month at one of its transfer stations from April - October.  Costs include $350/cubic yard box for recycling the paint, plus the staff time necessary to ensure that solvents and pool chemicals aren’t left along with the paint, which happens too often when nobody is paying attention.  The cost to manage latex paint this way exceeded the cost to dispose of it with conventional trash, which is acceptable as long as it’s dry. 

Although “swapping” was encouraged, supply far exceeded demand.  With more consumers preferring latex to oil based paint, the amount of hazardous non-latex paint coming in has diminished steadily (which is a good thing), to a point at which it is more practical to just collect it at its semi-annual household hazardous product collections.

Hanover has just added a spring HHP collection to supplement the fall one, and is also evaluating the efficiency of keeping its paint shed open each month.

Volunteer to help Marshfield Fair recycle again!

     Marshfield Fair's first recycling effort in 2004 was so successful that Fair organizers Carleton Chandler and Roni LaHage want to expand Fair recycling this year, which runs from Aug. 19 - Aug. 28, 2005.  DEP’s Ann McGovern, who organized the effort last year through a Technical Assistance Grant to the SSRC, has volunteered to put it together again this year with help from the Executive Director. To do this, we need others to join in the fun again. Opportunities include:

N encouraging vendors and fairgoers to recycle

N   staffing  the recycling-composting exhibit

N    flattening boxes         
N collecting recyclables with the morning clean-up crew    

     Marshfield Fair is an agricultural fair attended by over 100,000 people, with all the traditional fun family attractions, rides, music, animals, flower and vegetable contests, exhibits and motocross events.

     If you would like to add a new dimension to your county fair experience by diverting massive amounts of cardboard, bottles and cans, with the added bonus of free admission, mark the dates and contact Ann McGovern at 617-292-5834 or ann.mcgovern@state.ma.us.  Several of us veterans from last year already have!

Marine Shrink Wrap Recycling Program enters third year

     This year, the Massachusetts Marine Shrink Wrap Recycling Program is being coordinated again by R. Marc Fournier, through the Boston-based environmental consulting firm Haley & Aldrich, with support from the American Plastics Council and Westborough recycler E. L. Harvey & Sons.  Over twenty marinas on the Mass. coast are collecting shrink wrap for recycling.

     Approximately 35 tons of white marine shrink wrap from over 2,500 boats was collected and recycled each year in 2003 and 2004 through this pioneering program coordinated by Fournier during his tenure at WasteCap of Mass.  Considering that an estimated 130 tons of shrink wrap is sold along the Massachusetts coastline, the American Plastics Council, marinas and others have identified marine shrink as an excellent opportunity to recycle the film rather than dispose of it. The marine shrink wrap collected in this year’s program will likely be used in the manufacture of plastic lumber decking.

     For more information, contact:  R. Marc Fournier, Senior Environmental Specialist, Haley & Aldrich, Inc.,  617.886.7445, MFournier@HaleyAldrich.com or Judith Dunbar, American Plastics Council, Judith_Dunbar@plastics.org.

STATE

DEP needs fines for funds

Steps up enforcement actions on town facilities

      No more Mr. Nice Guy.  Due in large measure to Governor Romney’s directive that avoid future budget reductions on addition to the 30% slashed in the past 3 years, DEP needs to show increased revenue through fees and fines, facility and waste ban inspectors are rooting out noncompliant municipal and private operations with a vengeance.  With budget cuts forcing the department to focus more on enforcement and less on assisting the regulated community with compliance, managers of transfer stations, closed landfills, highway garages and even compost sites should dig out their waste ban plans, permits and other rules and regulations and make sure their ducks are in a row. 

     This is no small task with municipal staff turnover, budget and staffing cuts, but the inspectors are giving little wiggle room to facility managers to clean up their acts and avoid a fine.  Inspectors from the different regions in the state are under increased pressure to meet their enforcement targets, and a couple of knowledgeable sources even assert that competition among the regions to levy fines is being encouraged.  Marshfield recently fell victim to a fine when large scale staff turnover resulted in their Waste Ban Plan being forgotten.  When it was discovered that the required screening and documentation wasn’t happening, they received a swift Administrative Consent Order with a $1,400 penalty and Notice of Noncompliance (NON).

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S EDITORIAL:    The mission of the DEP would be better served if the department were released from this directive to self-fund, and went back to assisting our overburdened and understaffed facility managers in complying with environmental regulations. This approach is more like robbing poor Peter to pay poor Paul.  Fines should be reserved for those who fail to demonstrate due diligence in correcting violations that have been pointed out to them.

     Less than 1% of our State budget is appropriated to environmental protection.  This gives our home state the dubious distinction of ranking 48^th out the 50 States in environmental spending.  we hope our leaders realize the value that investing in environmental protection brings and restore the cuts the DEP has suffered since 2002 before irreversible damage is done.

FY06 Recycling Budget still gasping

     As this goes online, the Senate is considering its Ways and Means Committee’s FY06 budget proposal and filing amendments.  Of particular interest to solid waste managers is line item 2010-0100, Recycling Coordination, which keeps morphing into 2 line items, as the redemption center earmark has become the redemption center line item, 2010-0200 (more on that later).  Also of increasing concern to us is the DEP budget, 2200-0100, which has been slashed by 30% since FY02, to its current level of $28M (see previous article).

     In the” good old days”, back around FY01 and 02, the State government appropriated about half the $30 million that was “ear-marked” for recycling programs through the Clean Environment Fund (CEF), into which the nickels from the 33% of unclaimed bottle deposits went.  But when the budget hit the skids, recycling and other environmental pro-grams suffered disproportionate cuts.  Coupled with Governor Romney’s absorption of most dedicated funds into the General Fund, including the CEF, the recycling line item was gutted, and now stands at just over $2M.  Thankfully is just adequate to maintain the support staff ( Ann McGovern, Rosemary Nolan, Lori Segall, Peggy Harlow…) on whom many of us rely for support and guidance, but cannot sustain many valuable public and private sector grant programs that had been helping to build infra-structure and establish programs to change the way our residents and businesses manage their waste to be more sustainable.

     Even with heavy lobbying from the recycling and solid waste community, both recycling and DEP’s budgets continue to scrape bottom, even as the administration talks about surpluses and refunds.  This January, the Governor proposed level funding for recycling, at $2.17M, retaining the House’s new FY05 line item for a redemption center subsidy of $1.375M (which supports 60 redemption centers), which used to be an earmark within the recycling line.  Redemption centers had never been able to meet the criteria to receive the full amount, so the earmark was never fully expended, leaving revenue for other more far-reaching endeavors.  To guarantee their subsidy, a separate line item was cut out, leaving a much smaller piece of the pie for all the 351 municipal programs and numerous businesses and nonprofits to build the State’s recycling infrastructure with assistance from the fund.  In FY05 the two lines ended up split, and combined added up to level funding of $3.51M.

     This year the Governor, the House and Senate Ways and Means kept the split (which they hadn’t last year).  The House nudged the recycling appropriation from $2.17M to $2.34M in Rep. DeLeo’s consolidated amendment, but SW&M stuck to the Governor’s request .

      With new regulations and legislation in the pipeline that would reduce costs for redemption centers, it would be prudent to recombine the two line items and leave some flexibility to channel those savings to do more education, municipal assistance, and reduce some other bloated waste streams, such as food, wood and commercial sector paper. The Executive Director had requested a meeting with Ways and Means Chairman Sen. Therese Murray, whose district includes Kingston and Plymouth, or her environmental budget staff Faye Boardman, to explain how solid waste figures in the big picture before the committee completes its budget, but was apparently too far back in line.  She will be requesting that our South Shore legislators file an amendment to recombine and increase the line.

SWAC/SWMP

     At DEP’s Solid Waste Advisory Committee (SWAC) meeting on Tuesday March 24, John Fischer presented draft revisions to the Beyond 2000 Solid Waste Master Plan (SWMP).  The SWAC had been providing input since last summer. Some key features of their proposed revisions are:

Ä add a 56% recycling goal to the difficult to understand 70% waste reduction goal

Ä add haulers and generators to facilities as waste ban enforcement targets

Ä focus on waste streams with greatest diversion potential: residential and commercial paper, food and yard waste

Ä emphasize regional coordination for residential access to haz prod collections

Ä explore PAYT as a Commonwealth Capital criterion; tighten DARP criteria

Ä add gypsum wallboard, asphalt shingles to C&D waste banned materials

Ä develop markets for banned material

Ä shift to a "No Net Export" goal instead of a policy with a target date

Ä maintain the combustion facility moratorium due to mercury emissions;

Ä base Reviews of Landfill expansion on site assignment and permit requirements, not disposal capacity

Sullivan Runs for President

     Yours truly, Claire Sullivan, is the only one that has thrown her hat into the ring as candidate for President of MassRecycle. 

     Over her 5 year tenure, current Pre-sident Jan Ameen, my Franklin County counterpart, has led MassRecycle from the brink of insolvency to resume its place as the voice and resource for our state's recycling community. 

     I believe that the mission of MassRecycle has much in common with that of the SSRC, and want it to continue to thrive.  The priorities I would bring to a MR presidency are to advocate for sensible waste management policy at the state level, and to influence individual behavior through public outreach.

     I would do my very best as president to keep MassRecycle's voice and support for the recycling community strong and effective.

“HANDKERCHIEF: Goes in ‘used cloth’ after it has been washed and dried”

“PING PONG BALL:  Goes into burnable household goods”

-2 of the 518 items listed n Yokohama’s 27 page

manual  on how to sort trash into ten categories