Recycling on MD's Mid-Shore: Looking Forward After Success
By Ann E. Dorbin
Got milk jugs? Once emptied, rather than languishing eternally in the local landfill, these days they might be reincarnated as plastic lumber available at the local hardware store. There is a greater than 50 percent chance that the soda can you’re sipping from was (and will again be) manufactured from recycled aluminum cans. Your daily newspaper could eventually be recycled into second-generation newsprint, Sheetrock™, or asphalt stabilizer. Those threadbare tires may end up as part of a playground or road surface, such as that used in the recent repaving of Glebe Road in Easton. Recycled glass is sometimes used to make “glassphalt,” which was used to pave the parking lot of the Liberty Building in Centreville. Other local recycled materials include electronics, yard waste, and “soil enhancers” made from recycled poultry manure or crab chum.
No longer considered the domain of “tree huggers” and heavy industry, recycling is increasingly commonplace, not only among environmentalists but also municipalities, businesses, contractors, and mainstream America. Cities, towns, counties, and states across the country have instituted various recycling programs. Delaware began statewide curbside recycling earlier this year. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, curbside recycling programs exist in more than 9,000 communities nationwide. The most innovative include "pay as you throw” programs, which incentivize recycling by allowing households to pay trash bills based on actual volume—less trash means lower cost. The most aggressive programs institute “zero waste” goals, such as that recently announced by the city of Austin, Texas, which is forging a plan to divert its entire landfill waste toward reuse and recycling by 2040.
What can the average person do to make a difference? Published in 2007,
The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time lists hundreds of simple, environmentally friendly things we can do in our daily lives. According to
The Green Book, “If everyone in America simply separated the paper, plastic, glass, and aluminum products from the trash and tossed them into a recycling bin, we could decrease the amount of waste sent to landfills by 75 percent.” With Mid-Shore municipal solid waste accumulating at a rate of about 350 tons per day (not counting construction and demolition materials), recycling could result in a significant decrease.
Recycling Is Nothing New
Nature has been recycling since the beginning of earthly time, and humans have been doing it for thousands of years. Native Americans, who lived off the land, could ill-afford to waste valuable resources. Curbside recycling began in Baltimore in 1874, the same year that a new device called “the destructor” provided the first systematic destruction of municipal waste in Nottingham, England. Reuse and recycling have always existed in the form of salvage, with recovered materials including leather, feathers and down, and textiles. Recycling included feeding vegetable wastes to livestock and using “green” waste as fertilizer. Pigs were often used as an efficient means for disposing of municipal waste. Timber was often salvaged and reused in construction and ship building. Materials such as gold have always been melted down and recast numerous times.
In the early 1890s, reuse programs adopted the phrase “waste as wealth” to describe the profits to be made from sorting and reselling items found in household trash. Although commonplace today, the concept of landfilling was not originated until the 1920s. During past conflicts, recycling was a patriotic way to help war efforts, and in hard economic times was a survival tool. During the 1950s, “throwaway living” came into fashion, ushering in an era of ease and convenience, beginning a modern era of product marketing, resulting in the use of aluminum cans, bottled water, and direct mail, all of which produce large amounts of disposable waste that can potentially be recycled.
Managing Modern Recycling
Today, we understand that recycling not only diverts the waste stream to valueadded markets but also conserves limited resources, saves energy, creates jobs, helps build a strong economy and reduces problems associated with litter and trash. While implementation of a recycling program with multi-state markets is complex, the will exists to handle the challenges. In 1988, the Maryland Recycling Act required all Eastern Shore counties to recycle 15-20 percent of their municipal solid waste. While the Mid-Shore region has met or exceeded this requirement, a large portion of reported recycling comes from commercial and poultry operations, and there is room for increased recycling volumes from household waste.
One Man’s “Burning” Passion Sparks Early Recycling
Even before Maryland began regulating collection rates, Mid-Shore recycling efforts were underway. In 1972, Kent Conservation, Inc. began one of Maryland’s first recycling programs. R. Ford Schumann, Jr. joined the group in 1976. In 1988, the threat of an incinerator being built in Kent County became a major issue, attracting the attention of such organizations as Greenpeace and Clean Water Action. Concerned residents posted “No Incinerator” signs on their homes. The outcry resulted in the defeat of the incinerator plan and an increase in public awareness of solid waste removal. Kent Conservation’s recycling volume tripled. The following year, Schumann started Infinity Recycling and took on the challenge of recycling in a rural area.
Today, Infinity Recycling is a nonprofit organization with a mission to provide quality services, education, research, and jobs to the community. It provides a range of services for homes, businesses, schools, towns, and events, collecting and recycling materials from Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s, and Talbot Counties, as well as some Delaware facilities. Infinity offers curbside recycling subscriptions in the towns of Easton, St. Michaels, Oxford, Hillsboro, Queen Anne, Centreville, and Queenstown. A town wide curbside recycling program is being planned for the town of Trappe, the first such program in Talbot County.
Schumann believes that small actions can add up to large benefits. “It might seem that recycling around the home or office just saves a few pounds of stuff from the landfill. But statistics show that every pound of newly created finished goods on average adds up to 71 pounds of waste! One pound of material is the equivalent of a few glass bottles, 30 aluminum cans, a fourinch stack of newspaper, or about three magazines."
In 1991, Chestertown’s Washington College presented Schumann its Distinguished Alumni Citation for his leadership and community outreach in environmental achievement and education.
“Someday,” he hopes, “there will be no such thing as trash.”
A Regional Approach
Schumann and Kent County went on to start a curbside recycling program. Then in 1988, EPA Subtitle D required landfills to have liners. This was an expensive proposition, spurring a cooperative partnership between Caroline, Kent, Queen Anne’s, and Talbot counties, which agreed on a solid waste management plan. In the early 1990s Queen Anne’s County began using “igloo” receptacles for collection, eventually expanding to become the Mid-Shore Regional Recycling Program (MRRP), a unique collaboration among the four counties. Funded primarily through a surcharge on solid waste disposed at the Mid-Shore Regional Landfill, other MRRP revenue sources include the sale of recyclables and grants. In 2006 about 19,446 tons of residential recycling were collected, avoiding close to $1 million in landfill tipping fees.
James Wood, MRRP’s Regional Recycling Coordinator, says, “MRRP is a wellused system. People use it and like it. With increased awareness and convenience, such as efficient curbside programs, many more people would recycle.”
MRRP provides financial and other support for:
- recycling of newspaper, magazines, and catalogs, office and other paper, plastic bottles and jugs, glass bottles and jars, household metal cans, scrap metal, lead acid batteries, appliances, cardboard, motor oil, antifreeze, yard waste, tires, clothing and textiles, and other materials when outlets can be developed;
- the Midshore Consolidation Facility in Easton, where recyclables are collected and stored until being transported to market;
- operation of the Igloo program, which serves 34 of the 40 recycling dropoff sites in the Mid-Shore region;
- equipment for recycling programs, such as igloos, igloo-collection trucks, curbside-collection trucks, roll-off containers, storage areas, walking floor trailer, and other equipment;
- transportation of recyclables to market in all four counties, mostly by cooperative hauling using county resources;
- removal of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerants from appliances;
- grinding of yard waste;
- tire recycling and alternate disposal arrangements;
- recycling and waste prevention education and awareness, and information and promotion to students, residents, and businesses;
- municipal recycling program grants;
- marketing of recycled material collected in the region;
- record keeping and reporting of the region’s recycling rates;
- two igloo-collection operators and the regional recycling coordinator; and
- coordination of the Mid-Shore region’s Household Hazardous Materials Collection Program, initiated in 1998. (Watch for information about the next household hazardous waste and electronics recycling events.)
Changes Ahead
The Maryland Environmental Service (MES) operates the Midshore Regional Solid Waste Facility (MRSWF) on behalf of partnering Caroline, Kent, Queen Anne’s, and Talbot counties. This partnership binds the parties to host a disposal facility for use by all waste generators within the region on a rotating basis for 20 years each. The first disposal facility is currently operating near Easton in Talbot County. Under the terms of the agreement, the landfill will relocate to Caroline County in 2011, and a relocation plan must be in place by 2009. Part of that plan will be to further define and expand the role of recycling in our region. A study team is now preparing the “Talbot County Solid Waste and Recycling Study” to assist in the decisionmaking process.
A grass-roots organization called Recycle Talbot was formed in 2007 and will be part of an advisory committee for the study. Recycle Talbot! seeks to increase Talbot County recycling collection, awareness and education, and countywide curbside service for all residents and businesses. The organization consults with Beryl Friel Eismeier, an expert who was involved in establishing curbside recycling in Kent County and instituting a comprehensive recycling program in Anne Arundel County. At the request of Recycle Talbot!, Eismeier prepared “Implementing Curbside Recycling in Easton, Maryland,” a report that was presented for review to the Easton Town Council in May 2007 (review the
report). Recycle Talbot! welcomes new members and volunteers as it works with government officials, environmental organizations, municipalities, restaurants, businesses, schools, parks, and events to facilitate recycling.
Anna Harding, a founding member of the group, says, “I wanted to start this group because I love and care about our Earth. There’s pride when you can say, ‘I live in a place that’s green and I recycle.’ People want to feel that about their community.”
“Recycling allows people to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem,” adds group member Charles Roveti. “We are seeing a greater awareness of recycling and the impact it has on a sustainable environment for future generations.”
MacLane Gibson, Chief of Solid Waste Operations for MES, which operates the regional landfill and generates funding and oversight for MRRP, says, “Not only is recycling the right thing to do to take care of the planet, but now it will pay for itself, and then some. Our Montgomery County facility generates roughly $500,000 in net profit annually. The more we head in that direction, the more it makes sense [and cents] to recycle.”
Recycling Services in the Mid-Shore Region
Midshore Regional Recycling Program (MRRP)
Partnership between Caroline, Kent, Queen Anne’s, and Talbot Counties
312 Safety Dr., P.O. Box 56, Centreville, MD 21617
(410) 758-6605
www.midshorerecycling.org
MRRP Recycling Coordinators
Regional Coordinator:
James Wood
(410) 758-6605
jwood@friend.ly.net
www.midshorerecycling.org
Caroline County:
Marshall Monteith
(410) 479-4040
mmonteith@pubworks.caroline.md.us
www.carolinemd.org/government/pubworks/solid_waste.html
Kent County:
Marty Holden
(410) 778-7448
mholden@kentcounty.com
www.kentcounty.com/gov/pubworks/waste.htm
Queen Anne’s County:
Charlie Brown
(410) 458-2697 ext. 133
cvanover@qac.org
www.qac.org/depts/dpw/roads/solidwaste/soldwaste.htm
Talbot County:
Derick Brummell
(410) 770-8170
dbrummell@talbgov.org
www.talbotcountymd.gov/index.php?page=PW_Recycling
Infinity Recycling:
Ford Schumann
(410) 778-5949; (800) 745-5949
infinrecy@aol.com
www.infinityrecycling.org
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ann e. dorbin
apr 08
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