Recycling & ReUse in Nelson

Expanded Information following the May 20 Friends of Nelson (FON) Talk

Written by Susan McSwain, May 21

Susan McSwain served as Nelson’s first Solid Waste & Recycling coordinator and helped with the overhaul from a system of unsupervised drop-off garbage sites to gated, staffed collection centers.

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Up until 1970, there was no garbage collection in Nelson. People dumped garbage in quarries, ditches, along roadsides, and in backyards – anyplace that was "out of sight, out of mind."

These places were called dumps, a word best reserved for the past. It is no longer acceptable to find an isolated tract of land, dig a pit, then build a mountain of garbage.

1970 turning point:

1) First Earth Day

2) Environmental Protection Agency was created

3) Gary Anderson won the contest to design a recycling logo that could be used nation-wide. He came up with the Mobius Loop, the three-arrow symbol for Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Companies could insert numbers in the middle to indicate the type of recycling process needed for individual items.

4) Reduce, Re-Use, Recycle became the “Three R” slogan for waste management, and the practices were to be followed in that order.

1971: Virginia enacted its first major waste regulation, the Solid Waste Management Act. It prohibited localities from allowing the operation of unregulated open dumps. Following this, Nelson opened several landfills during the 1970s as alternatives for indiscriminate dumping. The primary landfill was in Shipman; others were located in places like Faber and Piney River. The landfills were not lined. Open-top dumpsters were set out at locations around county where people could dump trash. Containers were originally not standardized, which required several people with a variety of trucks to haul them to the

landfills.

The first contract to service dumpster sites was given to Charles Jackson, a resident in Lovingston. Containers were standardized so that all could be hauled with a single type of truck, but the number of dumpster sites had grown to 21. Charles was unable to keep up with the hauling, and he nearly went bankrupt trying. The County then contracted with a major waste-hauling company.

By now, the practice of Re-Use had become intertwined with the dumpster sites in Nelson. People set out items on the ground that were too good to waste, hoping someone who wanted them would take the items. The downside was that items could be ruined by snow, ice, rain, wind, and sun.

The commercial waste hauling company did not operate on weekends, but this was when dumpsters would fill up due to heavy usage. This resulted in more garbage than could fit inside the dumpster, so the excess garbage was dumped on the ground. The sites were not only unsightly, but they were also a source of blowing litter. On Monday mornings when the over-packed dumpsters were removed, all items on the ground were tossed into the empty replacement dumpsters delivered to the sites. This included items that had been left on the

ground intended for Re-Use.

Safety was an issue at these sites:

1) Trash on the ground required people to walk through the rubble.

2) People had to either heft items overhead to throw them over the wall of the dumpster or climb the ladders beside the dumpsters to reach the top of the wall.

3) Some of the ladders were very wobbly, especially the ones at Faber where the ground was not flat. People with balance problems often waited for another person to arrive to help them put their garbage into the dumpsters.

4) The sites were places where unwanted cats and dogs were discarded. A major cat colony became established at the Shipman site, fostered in part by the questionable SPCA program of TNR (Trap, Neuter, Release). One year, a boy was bitten by one of the cats, and even though the TNR cats had been given rabies vaccinations, there was no way to know which cat had bitten the boy. He had to undergo the expensive and unpleasant rabies shots.

5) Dumpster diving was potentially dangerous. I once arrived at a dumpster site to find a couple who had lowered their 10-year-old son into a dumpster to collect aluminum cans to be sold to a scrap dealer. The boy was wearing sneakers and did not have gloves. I pointed out that there could be sharps in the trash, and if their son was punctured by one, he could be exposed to AIDS. They pulled their son out of the dumpster and vowed to never again put him at risk.

6) Hunters sometimes tossed deer carcasses on the ground by dumpsters, creating a problem with odor and flies.

In 1982 Nelson closed the unlined County dumps and opened a lined landfill in Arrington. A liner is a low-permeable barrier that retards the migration of water that has filtered down through the landfill. This water – called leachate – can pick up toxins and contaminate ground and surface waters in the area if it infiltrates ground below the landfill. In 1999, a law was passed in Virginia that required all municipal landfills that had been opened before 1988 to be closed by 2020. The type of liners that had been used during this time period did not sufficiently contain leachate, and methane control was also insufficient or lacking entirely. Landfills constructed after 1988 were called “sanitary” landfills, with improved liners and methods for addressing leachate and methane gas.

Nelson closed its landfill and built a Transfer Station at the Arrington landfill site. A Transfer Station is a centralized facility where local garbage is deposited onto a concrete tipping floor. That waste is then loaded into tractor trailers and delivered to an approved modern landfill. As for recycling, recycle cans had been set out at six of the 21 sites, but with no supervision, recycle cans were often so contaminated with garbage that entire contents had to be landfilled instead of recycled.

In 2002, two volunteers (Paulette Albright and Susan McSwain) on the Keep Nelson Beautiful (KNB) Committee conducted a study of the County’s solid waste system to determine how it could be improved. They visited the Transfer Station and all 21 dumpster sites to take photos and write notes. They also visited other counties (Wythe, Albemarle, Augusta, Rockville, Buckingham, Amherst) to meet with solid waste officials to learn about practices that could be beneficial for Nelson, as well as discover issues that should be avoided. Additionally, they visited the Sonoco Recycling facility in Madison Heights, the Tidewater Fibers

Materials Recycling Facility south of Richmond in Chester, and the mega-landfill in Amelia County owned by Waste Management Inc. They researched costs and met individually with all Nelson supervisors to discuss what they had discovered. With the input they received, they wrote a report and again visited with each supervisor individually to finalize the proposal that they then presented at a BOS meeting. In 2003, their proposal was adopted unanimously, and the County set out to replace unsupervised dumpster sites with a system of staffed Collection

Centers.

Personal Account by Susan about her New Position;

I was hired to fill the new “part-time” position of Solid Waste & Recycling to help oversee the system change-over. This involved helping in the search for locations where staffed centers could be built, education and outreach with the public, presentations at meetings for numerous organizations (Nelson Homebuilders, EDA, Ruritans, CVEC, Chamber of Commerce, RVCC, WPOA

Board), consultations with solid waste equipment vendors, researching specs for equipment bids, learning how to write an IFB, discussions with the people involved in site design, and attending educational seminars sponsored by the Virginia Recycling Association.

The Rockfish Collection Center opened in early 2005. I sat on the interview panel to hire attendants and trained all of them, which included working alongside them during their initial shifts. Shipman and Massies Mill opened in 2008, and Faber opened in 2010. The only unsupervised sites that were left were Montebello, Gladstone, and Wintergreen, all of which are still open today.

Within weeks of opening Rockfish, citizens began leaving give-away items on the ground near the attendant office. A system was needed to accommodate Re-Use, and I realized that the second-most important of the Three Rs of waste management was being ignored by DEQ. I began attending DEQ meetings throughout the state to advocate for allowing Re-Use numbers to be included in the annual recycle reports required from localities. Recycling requires significant inputs of energy, and operating a recycling program in a rural county with no

curbside pick-up can be both expensive and challenging. Re-Use, on the other hand, is pretty much free of high costs, and the practice fits in with the community.

In 2007, the VA legislature approved Re-Use as a factor that could be included in annual reports. Upon passage of the legislation, KNB applied to the Nelson Board of Supervisors for permission to install a Re-Use Shed at Rockfish. KNB was eligible to receive funds from the annual Litter Grant offered by DEQ to localities that had active recycling/litter programs that worked with the public. KNB paid for the purchase and installation of the Re-Use Shed ($2400) using Litter Grant money. When the other three staffed sites were opened, KNB again paid for Re-Use Sheds at those sites. Once the Re-Use Shed was installed at Rockfish, it was possible to obtain an estimate of the volume of material that was being re-used in the County. Transportation costs of hauling items to the Transfer Station and then onwards to a landfill along with payment of a tipping fee at a landfill are avoided when items are re-used instead of trashed.

The Re-Use Shed at Rockfish diverts between 5 to 10 tons per year from the landfill. Using numbers from the Re-Use Shed, it became possible to estimate the tonnage of re-use items in the Treasure Chest and other thrift stores in the County. To avoid accusations of over-counting tonnage, the numbers submitted to DEQ were kept on the low end of the estimate. However, thrift shops in Nelson divert close to double what is diverted through the Rockfish Re-Use Shed.

This means that the Treasure Chest and other thrifts help boost the recycle rate for the County. This keeps a significant volume of goods from being landfilled at tax-payer expense, reduces the number of new items some people might buy, and assists people who cannot afford new items to find goods that they can use.

Re-Use Sheds were not part of the original blueprint for staffed sites, but they provide a service both desired and needed in the County. I was possibly the only recycling coordinator in Virginia to also pursue an effort to convince DEQ

that the mandated 25% recycle rate for localities should be lowered to 15% for rural counties with low-density population. The recycle rate is computed by weight, so counties with large populations have a lot of businesses that contribute to that 25% rate through things like high volumes of heavy construction debris that is recycled. In 2006, DEQ lowered the target rate to

15% for counties with a population density rate of less than 100 persons per square mile. Nelson has 31.4 people/square mile. Before converting to a staffed system, Nelson’s recycle rate had never been higher than 7%, but after switching to staffed sites, the County was able to increase recycling enough to meet the 15% recycle rate. After Rockfish opened, two important improvements were made – the addition of a cardboard compactor and the removal of an open-top dumpster. Cardboard boxes can be difficult to flatten by hand, and they were being tossed into the recycle container for mixed paper. Empty boxes take up space, which meant that the paper container was being hauled on a regular basis before it was full. I contacted the company that had won the bid for our garbage compactors, and was told that a smaller and less powerful compactor than those used for garbage could be used to flatten boxes, but not compact the load to the

extent that the cardboard could not be emptied from the container. The cost of the smaller compactor could be recouped in only three years due to the savings that would result from fewer hauls of the mixed paper container. The issue became – where to put it!

There were no extra concrete pads available at Rockfish, but one of the pads was taken up by an open-top dumpster. This dumpster had been a problem, however, since the start-up of the center. Citizens had been filling the dumpster with heavy furniture, appliances like refrigerators, TVs, and stoves, and construction debris and commercial trash – items that people should have instead been taking directly to the Transfer Station. During the first year after opening Rockfish, the dumpster had been hauled to the Transfer Station 130 times, or

more than twice a week. After discussions with County staff and supervisors, the open-top dumpster was removed and electricity was added to that pad so that a cardboard compactor could be installed. With the compactor in place, the County was able to save money on fewer mixed paper trips while also providing high quality pre-sorted corrugated cardboard to a recycling vendor. People who recycled their cardboard really liked using the new compactor. Discontinuing use of the the dumpster had solved a second problem. Use of the dumpster

required people to either throw items high into the air or else stand in the back of a pick-up truck in order to get items over the top of the dumpster.

Remember, the unsupervised sites had ladders by the dumpsters. Several incidents had already occurred when heavy glass items had hit the top of the dumpster wall causing a shower of broken glass to fly in all directions. Luckily, no one had been hurt. When the next three staffed collection centers were built,

cardboard compactors were included, but not open-top dumpsters.

Diesel prices spiked in 2008 and again in 2011, greatly increasing the cost for the private waste company to haul waste from Collection Centers to the Transfer Station and to the recycling facility in Madison Heights. Taxes on diesel are higher than on regular gas, but the County can purchase tax-free diesel. Unlike a private company, hauling waste was not a way to make money for the County, so a decision was made to discontinue the services of a commercial hauler and buy two roll-off trucks. The people hired as drivers were County employees, and

hauling could be done on weekends and after hours when needed – a service unavailable with the private waste hauler.

In conclusion, Rockfish is the busiest collection center in Nelson, handling double the amount of residential garbage and recycling of even the second busiest center. It is difficult for attendants to keep up with everything going on at Rockfish, including abuses at the Re-Use Shed. However, the County has recently made significant inroads to solve problems caused by just a

few people. The sheriff is cooperating with the County and is notifying offenders that if they continue to cause problems at the Re-Use Shed, they will be banned from using all of the county collection centers. (Years ago, this type of warning led to one person being banned, so warning letters carry weight.)

People should consider using the Massies Mill Collection Center any time they are driving south on 151, or the Faber Collection Center if driving east on U.S. 29. These two sites are not much out of the way from 151 and U.S. 29. Usage at those sites is far lower than at Rockfish, and the sites have a larger footprint which allows attendants the ability to pay closer attention to the Re-Use Sheds, the garbage compactors, and the recycle containers. They have time to tidy up

the Re-Use Sheds and put items that don’t belong into the garbage compactors. This is part of the job that attendants at Rockfish are seldom able to do.

I met with Candy McGarry, the County Administrator, two days before tonight, and we discussed the fact that citizens want to help keep the Re-Use Shed at Rockfish open.

Additionally, there is a need for improved training for the attendants. This would include standardizing practices, informing them when to alert the dispatch office in case of an altercation on the site, how to avoid altercations in the first place, and knowledge about the nature of items that can be put into the garbage compactors, recycle cans, and the Re-Use Shed. People visiting the site should be discouraged from lingering on the porch talking and distracting the attendants from their job. Attendants need to actively work the site while on

duty. County citizens encounter attendants more often than they meet with any other County employees. After all, everyone has garbage. The attendant job entails far more than pressing the button on compactors and unlocking the gate in the morning and closing up in the evening.

They provide an extremely important role in maintaining quality handling of garbage and recycling, and they are the liaisons between the public and an extremely important and essential service provided by the County government.