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Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Monday, February 12, 2018
Transfer Station/Recycle Center - February 10th, 2018
Lauren Ho
"Visit to the Transfer Station/Recycle Center"
640 Main Street, Andover, New Hampshire
Date of Excursion: February 10th, 2018
On February 10th, the class all brought trash/recycling from our dorms to APES class first block, and headed onto the bus with Alan to make our way to the Town of Andover Transfer Station and Recycling center, located at 640 Main Street. It was a short trip of 2.1 miles and it was only about 3 minutes in the bus one way. It was a relatively warm morning when we went, leaving at around 8:20am and returning at around 9:00am to head to our next class. There was snow on the ground, but not too much. The sun was out, but not shining directly on us, and the winds were still so it was the perfect combination of hot and cold. It was a little chilly, but we all had coats to keep up warm. It was a relatively small place over all.
Screenshot from Google Maps Photo taken from @proctoracademy Instagram
The Andover Transfer Station and Recycling Center is where residents of Andover, New Hampshire, go to dispose of their trash and recycling. It is a processing site and waste management (chapter 22 vocabulary) that it used for the temporary deposition of waste generated by the town. It is not meant for industrial solid waste (chapter 22 vocabulary). In order to use the transfer station, residents of the town must obtain a permit in the form of a sticker that will be placed on their car. They come with the small fee of $5.00 per car, and proof of residency must be provided when residents apply for a permit. There were a few different waste disposal group areas that we looked at. The trash, recyclables and dispolables are laster sent onto other places to be properly recycled or disposed of, such as Boston, Rochester, Concord and New London.
We started by looking at the general trash dump and took turns throwing in the trash bags we had brought. This is where all municipal solid waste (chapter 22 vocabulary) is disposed of. We were lucky enough to be able to see the compacter in action, squishing all the bags and creating space for more trash. When we were here, Alan talked about the sign above the trash disposal that said "DUMPING RECYCLABLES HERE MEANS HIGHER TAXES FOR ALL". He went on to described how reducing our overall trash generation would reduce costs for the town, because it is measured by weight and taxes follow accordingly. On another note, the state of New Hampshire is currently working on finding a way to require transfer stations to compost food waste, because this will results in a very significant trash waste reduction.
Throwing trash - photo taken by Lauren Ho General trash disposal - photo taken by Lauren Ho
After looking at the general trash disposal area, we moved into a room in which there were a lot of items (such as toys, books etc.) including televisions - E-Waste - and we learned that they ship these away to be disposed of. It is sent to another company for about $0.48/lb to be recycled. It costs between $2-$16 for an Andover resident to dispose of e-waste here. This price covers the price of sending it off to be recycled. I believe electronics are sent to Rochester after the transfer station. The company that receives the waste from the transfer station tries to recycle the plastics, metals and as much of the product as possible. We learned that items in this room could be taken, picked up or traded by any resident of Andover. In this room, there was also a box to dispose of lightbulbs and other mercury-containing items. I learned that it is against the law to throw items containing mercury in the trash. This includes anything from fluorescent lamps, compact fluorescent lamps, thermometers, thermostats, to tilt switches, manometers and button batteries. It is unknown where electronics and alkaline batteries go after they leave the facility. Mercury containing products can be harmful to the environment if they are improperly disposed of. Consumers are encouraged to bring their mercury products along with their other recyclables and either dispose of them through "collection and recycling at municipal facilities", "household hazardous waste (Chapter 22 vocabulary) collection events" (they host one day where they collect all household hazardous waste for free!!) or "municipal and commercial thermostat recycling locations. The reason why is because mercury is a highly toxic chemical that when it accumulates in human bodies, it never breaks down into a non-toxic form. It can be damaging to the liver, kidney and brain(causing neurological disorders). It can also be absorbed by plants and animals once it's released into the air. It bioaccumulates and moves up the food chain. (http://www.andover-nh.gov/assets/municipal/10/Products_Containing_Mercury_List_1476198738.pdf)
E-Waste - Photo by Lauren Ho Tradable trash - Photo by Lauren Ho
When we were done inside, we moved onto the recyclables disposal and learned that Andover recycles about 70% of their waste. Some of us who brought our recycling threw it in, and then we learned about single stream recycling. By definition single stream recycling refers to "a system in which all paper fibers, plastics, metals and other containers are mixed in a collection truck, instead of being sorted by the depositor into separate commodities." Also, we weren't allowed to throw in the recycling bags, but instead had to pour all the recyclables out into the disposal. Because this facility requires that residents have to sort their own trash, they have very clear guidelines on what should be recycled and what shouldn't. It is important that people individually sort out their own trash, because failure to do so would increase in fees and taxes for everyone. It's like a team effort. When describing how the single stream recycling works, Alan said "This site has a whole automised system that will pick out all these things and bundle them into collections and send them off into the market or whoever wants to recover this material" (-Alan McIntyre). He talked about how China was the biggest buyer of plastics, and the plastic market is now collapsing, that means that we have a lot of plastic resources in this country and "if someone is innovative enough, they could make that into manufacturing stuff and make America great again." (-Alan McIntyre).
Single stream recycling - Photo by Lauren Ho Pouring out recyclables - Photo by Lauren Ho
Recycling Disposal - Photo by Lauren Ho
After that, we moved forward and took a look at the glass disposal. The glass disposal was just a big, bright orange dumpster. It was filled with snow and just has glass bottles sticking out of it here and there. The first thing that Alan said to us here was that "at every dump, at every recycling center, at every trash can, there are errors that are made. And these recycling services expect that about 10% of stuff that doesn't belong. They don't like to go over that number. The more pure it is, the better it is for recovery" (-Alan McIntyre). Because there weren't many bottles disposed of in this dumpster, we were able to immediately identify some things that didn't belong, such as a styrofoam cup from Dunkin' Donuts. Building off of what Alan said, because more purity means it's better for recovery, other countries and areas may have stricter rules. Because we have zero-sort, we are more prone to having errors. However, the biggest issue is that people don't participate in recycling to begin with. The reason why the town went single stream was because they were trying to increase the amount of stuff recovered. It's impossible to have a perfect system, because there are always pros and cons. Other places such as Germany and Italy have very strict rules of enforcement, they have better recovery rates and purer streams for the market, and they don't have participation issues because people are required to participate. One way to get a lot of participation to do "pay as you throw", whereas this is free. There are also a lot of other factors that influence the cost, for example the cost of moving it. The glass is charged by weight, gasoline is used, so the price of gasoline influences it. The glass in this particular bin would be headed to New London, and a plant there would break it down and mix it in with asphalt. "There is more glass in the waste stream in the state of New Hampshire than anything else, so you don't get a lot of money for that. If there's an oversupply and not enough demand...that's economics. Cardboard, we usually make lots of money on cardboard." (-Alan McIntyre) What is important about this is exactly in the quote. We have too much glass and there isn't enough demand for it, so we are making a minimal about of money, whereas with things with higher demand, such as cardboard, we make more money off it and we hope for a higher supply of it.
Resident disposing of glass - Lauren Ho // Glass dumpster - photo by Lauren Ho
"If you market your budget and your workers based off the volatility of the recycling market... you're in trouble" - Alan McIntyre
We then headed over to another dumpster, which was the white goods, which is the generic term for appliances with chemicals in them. Disposal of these cost about $5-$8 per item. It is expensive because someone has to extract the chemicals which are hazardous to the environment out of them. These are sent to Concord after the transfer station. Over on the other side, there was a dumpster for flame retardant products, specifically construction debris, they're hazardous so they have to be separated. On Proctor's campus, it would be the stuff that we keep behind the hockey rink. That is where we keep our construction debris. We saw the metal scraps dump but didn't walk over because of the coldness and the snow, and we didn't talk too much about it. We then walked over to a burn pile.
Metal Scraps and White goods - Photo by Lauren Ho
Flame Retardants & Metal Scraps Burn Pile (covered in snow)
Photo by Lauren Ho Photo by Lauren Ho
"The biggest challenge for any town dump or transfer station is that most towns are growing, and most people create more and more trash every year. The idea is to create zero waste and have everything go back into its own cycle," like closed loop recycling (chapter 22 vocabulary), breaking the cradle-to-grave system and turning it into a cradle-to-cradle (chapter 22 vocabulary) system. "Yard waste and food waste is something this town is yet to master. 20% of the trash flow is organic." -Alan McIntyre
There was a lot of snow in the 'burn pile' and we found out that they usually wait until it melts a little bit before they pile it up, add gasoline and burn things. The last thing that we looked at (from a distance) was a trailer full of tires. It costs $5 for a tire to dispose of them, and they can either be incinerated (chapter 22 vocabulary) or they can be recycled.
Tire Trailer - photo by Lauren Ho
"Not all transfer stations are some cruel, capitalist service" -Alan McIntyre
(A Proctor service group collected 45 tires along the rail trail in the fall and the town didn't charge them $5 a tire, because that would be almost $200. They took the tires because they were grateful that the group cleaned up and reduced hazards of mosquitoes etc.)
"All these materials are going to be useful for something - whether it's life forms, composting, or for human innovation - recycling." -Alan McIntyre
Photo taken from @proctoracademy Instagram
Reflection:
This experience/field trip was extremely eye opening for me, because I got to see that there are so many details that go into sorting 'garbage'. Things that we throw away when we are done with them aren't just one big category of 'garbage'. They aren't even just two big categories of "recyclable" and "non-recyclable". There are countless subcategories within both of those two major groups. It also gave me an opportunity to see where my waste goes after I throw it into the trash can or recycling bin and it gets taken out of my dorm. Although it makes me sound very arrogant and snobby, I had never heard of a transfer station before this. I don't believe there are any transfer stations in Hong Kong, and we never had to drive our trash anywhere to dispose of it. Growing up, all I knew about the disposal of trash was that I threw it into the big garbage can in the kitchen or under my desk, and it got taken out the back door in the stairwell. Someone would then come a few mornings a week, take all the trash from the backdoors of the entire building, throw it into a truck, and then I would never know anything about where it went after the big truck disappeared around the corner of our driveway. There was also no option for recycling in my apartment building. Everyone's trash went in one place and it got taken away, all to the same place. Being able to experience this and see ordinary Andover residents piling into the transfer station to dispose of their trash properly, to boost economics and to increase the health of the environment was really inspiring and (for lack of a better word) surprising to me. It was also very shocking to me the amount of trash that the tiny town of Andover produces. With only about 700 people bringing their garbage there every week, it is a lot of trash for a mere 7 days. It makes me really curious to know what a transfer station in a big city might look like, New York, or even Hong Kong for example. On a ending note, hearing Alan talk about the way things are managed and briefly hearing from one of the workers there, he very clearly stressed the importance of everything being sorted well and safely at the transfer station to simplify and make everything after that much smoother. I really hope to be able to learn more about transfer stations and the waste cycle.
"Visit to the Transfer Station/Recycle Center"
640 Main Street, Andover, New Hampshire
Date of Excursion: February 10th, 2018
On February 10th, the class all brought trash/recycling from our dorms to APES class first block, and headed onto the bus with Alan to make our way to the Town of Andover Transfer Station and Recycling center, located at 640 Main Street. It was a short trip of 2.1 miles and it was only about 3 minutes in the bus one way. It was a relatively warm morning when we went, leaving at around 8:20am and returning at around 9:00am to head to our next class. There was snow on the ground, but not too much. The sun was out, but not shining directly on us, and the winds were still so it was the perfect combination of hot and cold. It was a little chilly, but we all had coats to keep up warm. It was a relatively small place over all.
Screenshot from Google Maps Photo taken from @proctoracademy Instagram
The Andover Transfer Station and Recycling Center is where residents of Andover, New Hampshire, go to dispose of their trash and recycling. It is a processing site and waste management (chapter 22 vocabulary) that it used for the temporary deposition of waste generated by the town. It is not meant for industrial solid waste (chapter 22 vocabulary). In order to use the transfer station, residents of the town must obtain a permit in the form of a sticker that will be placed on their car. They come with the small fee of $5.00 per car, and proof of residency must be provided when residents apply for a permit. There were a few different waste disposal group areas that we looked at. The trash, recyclables and dispolables are laster sent onto other places to be properly recycled or disposed of, such as Boston, Rochester, Concord and New London.
We started by looking at the general trash dump and took turns throwing in the trash bags we had brought. This is where all municipal solid waste (chapter 22 vocabulary) is disposed of. We were lucky enough to be able to see the compacter in action, squishing all the bags and creating space for more trash. When we were here, Alan talked about the sign above the trash disposal that said "DUMPING RECYCLABLES HERE MEANS HIGHER TAXES FOR ALL". He went on to described how reducing our overall trash generation would reduce costs for the town, because it is measured by weight and taxes follow accordingly. On another note, the state of New Hampshire is currently working on finding a way to require transfer stations to compost food waste, because this will results in a very significant trash waste reduction.
Throwing trash - photo taken by Lauren Ho General trash disposal - photo taken by Lauren Ho
After looking at the general trash disposal area, we moved into a room in which there were a lot of items (such as toys, books etc.) including televisions - E-Waste - and we learned that they ship these away to be disposed of. It is sent to another company for about $0.48/lb to be recycled. It costs between $2-$16 for an Andover resident to dispose of e-waste here. This price covers the price of sending it off to be recycled. I believe electronics are sent to Rochester after the transfer station. The company that receives the waste from the transfer station tries to recycle the plastics, metals and as much of the product as possible. We learned that items in this room could be taken, picked up or traded by any resident of Andover. In this room, there was also a box to dispose of lightbulbs and other mercury-containing items. I learned that it is against the law to throw items containing mercury in the trash. This includes anything from fluorescent lamps, compact fluorescent lamps, thermometers, thermostats, to tilt switches, manometers and button batteries. It is unknown where electronics and alkaline batteries go after they leave the facility. Mercury containing products can be harmful to the environment if they are improperly disposed of. Consumers are encouraged to bring their mercury products along with their other recyclables and either dispose of them through "collection and recycling at municipal facilities", "household hazardous waste (Chapter 22 vocabulary) collection events" (they host one day where they collect all household hazardous waste for free!!) or "municipal and commercial thermostat recycling locations. The reason why is because mercury is a highly toxic chemical that when it accumulates in human bodies, it never breaks down into a non-toxic form. It can be damaging to the liver, kidney and brain(causing neurological disorders). It can also be absorbed by plants and animals once it's released into the air. It bioaccumulates and moves up the food chain. (http://www.andover-nh.gov/assets/municipal/10/Products_Containing_Mercury_List_1476198738.pdf)
E-Waste - Photo by Lauren Ho Tradable trash - Photo by Lauren Ho
When we were done inside, we moved onto the recyclables disposal and learned that Andover recycles about 70% of their waste. Some of us who brought our recycling threw it in, and then we learned about single stream recycling. By definition single stream recycling refers to "a system in which all paper fibers, plastics, metals and other containers are mixed in a collection truck, instead of being sorted by the depositor into separate commodities." Also, we weren't allowed to throw in the recycling bags, but instead had to pour all the recyclables out into the disposal. Because this facility requires that residents have to sort their own trash, they have very clear guidelines on what should be recycled and what shouldn't. It is important that people individually sort out their own trash, because failure to do so would increase in fees and taxes for everyone. It's like a team effort. When describing how the single stream recycling works, Alan said "This site has a whole automised system that will pick out all these things and bundle them into collections and send them off into the market or whoever wants to recover this material" (-Alan McIntyre). He talked about how China was the biggest buyer of plastics, and the plastic market is now collapsing, that means that we have a lot of plastic resources in this country and "if someone is innovative enough, they could make that into manufacturing stuff and make America great again." (-Alan McIntyre).
Single stream recycling - Photo by Lauren Ho Pouring out recyclables - Photo by Lauren Ho
Recycling Disposal - Photo by Lauren Ho
After that, we moved forward and took a look at the glass disposal. The glass disposal was just a big, bright orange dumpster. It was filled with snow and just has glass bottles sticking out of it here and there. The first thing that Alan said to us here was that "at every dump, at every recycling center, at every trash can, there are errors that are made. And these recycling services expect that about 10% of stuff that doesn't belong. They don't like to go over that number. The more pure it is, the better it is for recovery" (-Alan McIntyre). Because there weren't many bottles disposed of in this dumpster, we were able to immediately identify some things that didn't belong, such as a styrofoam cup from Dunkin' Donuts. Building off of what Alan said, because more purity means it's better for recovery, other countries and areas may have stricter rules. Because we have zero-sort, we are more prone to having errors. However, the biggest issue is that people don't participate in recycling to begin with. The reason why the town went single stream was because they were trying to increase the amount of stuff recovered. It's impossible to have a perfect system, because there are always pros and cons. Other places such as Germany and Italy have very strict rules of enforcement, they have better recovery rates and purer streams for the market, and they don't have participation issues because people are required to participate. One way to get a lot of participation to do "pay as you throw", whereas this is free. There are also a lot of other factors that influence the cost, for example the cost of moving it. The glass is charged by weight, gasoline is used, so the price of gasoline influences it. The glass in this particular bin would be headed to New London, and a plant there would break it down and mix it in with asphalt. "There is more glass in the waste stream in the state of New Hampshire than anything else, so you don't get a lot of money for that. If there's an oversupply and not enough demand...that's economics. Cardboard, we usually make lots of money on cardboard." (-Alan McIntyre) What is important about this is exactly in the quote. We have too much glass and there isn't enough demand for it, so we are making a minimal about of money, whereas with things with higher demand, such as cardboard, we make more money off it and we hope for a higher supply of it.
Resident disposing of glass - Lauren Ho // Glass dumpster - photo by Lauren Ho
"If you market your budget and your workers based off the volatility of the recycling market... you're in trouble" - Alan McIntyre
We then headed over to another dumpster, which was the white goods, which is the generic term for appliances with chemicals in them. Disposal of these cost about $5-$8 per item. It is expensive because someone has to extract the chemicals which are hazardous to the environment out of them. These are sent to Concord after the transfer station. Over on the other side, there was a dumpster for flame retardant products, specifically construction debris, they're hazardous so they have to be separated. On Proctor's campus, it would be the stuff that we keep behind the hockey rink. That is where we keep our construction debris. We saw the metal scraps dump but didn't walk over because of the coldness and the snow, and we didn't talk too much about it. We then walked over to a burn pile.
Metal Scraps and White goods - Photo by Lauren Ho
Flame Retardants & Metal Scraps Burn Pile (covered in snow)
Photo by Lauren Ho Photo by Lauren Ho
"The biggest challenge for any town dump or transfer station is that most towns are growing, and most people create more and more trash every year. The idea is to create zero waste and have everything go back into its own cycle," like closed loop recycling (chapter 22 vocabulary), breaking the cradle-to-grave system and turning it into a cradle-to-cradle (chapter 22 vocabulary) system. "Yard waste and food waste is something this town is yet to master. 20% of the trash flow is organic." -Alan McIntyre
There was a lot of snow in the 'burn pile' and we found out that they usually wait until it melts a little bit before they pile it up, add gasoline and burn things. The last thing that we looked at (from a distance) was a trailer full of tires. It costs $5 for a tire to dispose of them, and they can either be incinerated (chapter 22 vocabulary) or they can be recycled.
Tire Trailer - photo by Lauren Ho
"Not all transfer stations are some cruel, capitalist service" -Alan McIntyre
(A Proctor service group collected 45 tires along the rail trail in the fall and the town didn't charge them $5 a tire, because that would be almost $200. They took the tires because they were grateful that the group cleaned up and reduced hazards of mosquitoes etc.)
"All these materials are going to be useful for something - whether it's life forms, composting, or for human innovation - recycling." -Alan McIntyre
Photo taken from @proctoracademy Instagram
Reflection:
This experience/field trip was extremely eye opening for me, because I got to see that there are so many details that go into sorting 'garbage'. Things that we throw away when we are done with them aren't just one big category of 'garbage'. They aren't even just two big categories of "recyclable" and "non-recyclable". There are countless subcategories within both of those two major groups. It also gave me an opportunity to see where my waste goes after I throw it into the trash can or recycling bin and it gets taken out of my dorm. Although it makes me sound very arrogant and snobby, I had never heard of a transfer station before this. I don't believe there are any transfer stations in Hong Kong, and we never had to drive our trash anywhere to dispose of it. Growing up, all I knew about the disposal of trash was that I threw it into the big garbage can in the kitchen or under my desk, and it got taken out the back door in the stairwell. Someone would then come a few mornings a week, take all the trash from the backdoors of the entire building, throw it into a truck, and then I would never know anything about where it went after the big truck disappeared around the corner of our driveway. There was also no option for recycling in my apartment building. Everyone's trash went in one place and it got taken away, all to the same place. Being able to experience this and see ordinary Andover residents piling into the transfer station to dispose of their trash properly, to boost economics and to increase the health of the environment was really inspiring and (for lack of a better word) surprising to me. It was also very shocking to me the amount of trash that the tiny town of Andover produces. With only about 700 people bringing their garbage there every week, it is a lot of trash for a mere 7 days. It makes me really curious to know what a transfer station in a big city might look like, New York, or even Hong Kong for example. On a ending note, hearing Alan talk about the way things are managed and briefly hearing from one of the workers there, he very clearly stressed the importance of everything being sorted well and safely at the transfer station to simplify and make everything after that much smoother. I really hope to be able to learn more about transfer stations and the waste cycle.
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