What a waste Without new incentives, recycling will continue to make just a small dent in the ever-accumulating amount of trash in Rhode Island BY STEVEN STYCOS

THE RECYCLING trucks stream into the Central Landfill in Johnston, dumping loads of paper in a huge pile on one side of the Materials Recycling Facility, and glass, metal, and plastic containers on the other side. A front-end loader then scoops up the material and deposits it on a conveyor belt.

On the paper side, workers clad in glove and insulated suits separate newspaper and corrugated cardboard from less desirable junk mail and thin cardboard, dropping each component down a chute to be bailed and trucked to paper product manufacturers. The process is similar on the container side, where workers deposit scrap metal and aluminum pie plates in separate chutes. The waste stream then travels through a Rube Goldberg-like contraption that separates aluminum cans, steel cans, milk jugs, and plastic soda bottles into bins for baling. Colored glass, like paper products, must be separated by hand.

Trucks wait for the result of these efforts. Aluminum cans go to Anheuser Busch to forge new ones. Paper is shipped to India and China. Corrugated cardboard goes to Syracuse, New York. Every year, the Materials Recycling Facility sorts 80,000 tons of trash for reuse, suggesting that recycling is an environmental success story in Rhode Island. But it isn’t. Despite the elaborate sorting effort in Johnston — and the ubiquitous plastic bins in the 26 of 39 communities that have curbside recycling in the state — household recycling has stagnated far short of the 50 percent goal recommended in 1993 by the Select Commission on the Future of Solid Waste Management in Rhode Island. And business recycling is almost non-existent.

The state’s comprehensive recycling program was enacted by the General Assembly in 1986, after environmentalists’ pleas for a bottle bill were rejected. Seventeen years later, a million tons of solid waste arrives at Central Landfill every year. But less than 10 percent of it is recycled.

Nationally, the picture is also grim. Less than a third of glass and plastic bottles are recycled, according to the nonprofit Container Recycling Institute in Arlington, Virginia, even though the percentage of the US covered by curbside recycling programs has grown from 15 percent in 1990 to 61 percent in 1999. Recycling of the one money-making product, aluminum cans, has actually declined to 55 percent, from a high of 65 percent in 1992. Nationally, 48 percent of paper is recycled, up from 29 percent in 1987, according to the American Forest and Paper Association, but because more paper goes to landfills than any other item, it remains the nation’s biggest recycling problem.

Although recycling may not be a sexy topic, the wasteful ways of our consumer culture pose serious problems. In particular, with only nine years of capacity left at the Central Landfill, Rhode Island’s weak recycling program guarantees that the state will face an unpleasant decision within the next decade: Find a location for a new dump, repeal the 1992 state ban on trash incineration, or pay heavy fees to truck trash out of state. As Sierra Club activist Barry Schiller puts it, "Solid waste is going to be one of the sleeper issues in the next few years, because the landfill is filling up."

The landfill has about two million tons of capacity remaining, according to Claude Cote, director of regulatory compliance for the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation. A permit for expansion into Phase V, with an additional seven millions tons of capacity, is expected to be granted by the state Department of Environmental Management (DEM), Code adds. But there’s no plan for disposing of Rhode Island’s trash after the estimated seven years that it will take to fill Phase V.

Recognizing the impending problem, the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation — which manages the landfill — has put together a 31-member solid waste management working group, and the panel held its first meeting in January. Top on the group’s agenda is extending the landfill’s life by invigorating the state’s sagging recycling efforts. With no community, especially Johnston, seeking to host future landfills, expanded recycling could postpone the controversial and costly decision about what to do with Rhode Island’s trash.

RECYCLING DOES MORE than merely preserving landfill space. It reduces mining, logging, and oil consumption by supporting the reuse of natural resources, rather than consuming virgin materials. Recycled materials also consume less energy. To produce aluminum cans from bauxite, for example, takes four times as much energy as producing them from old cans, according to the Container Recycling Institute.

Environmentalists note that recycling also creates jobs. Sixty-five people work at the Materials Recycling Facility in Johnston, for example, and another 23 at CleanScape Inc., a Providence-based business that handles recyclables for businesses and institutions. With manufacturing jobs rapidly disappearing, says CleanScape president and general manager Edward Connelly, recycling can provide decent paying jobs for Rhode Islanders who don’t have college degrees. But Rhode Island is far from making a maximum effort to save energy, preserve the environment, and create useful environmental jobs.

The state’s trash managers insist they need fatter carrots and bigger sticks to induce more recycling. Low tipping fees to dump refuse at the landfill and low prices for recycled materials currently make it cheaper to put everything in the trash rather than separating recyclables. If this behavior becomes more expensive through heightened tipping fees and a charge on homeowners for each bag of trash, trash experts say, recycling will increase. Enforcing Rhode Island’s mandatory recycling law would also help, as would making it easier to collect paper, cans, and bottles, especially for businesses.

Everyone agrees that the paucity of business recycling in Rhode Island is a much bigger problem than residential recycling. Although state law requires businesses to recycle, no records are kept on business recycling. Geoff DiCenso, a regional recycling coordinator for Resource Recovery, calls business recycling "almost non-existent."

This represents an enormous gap in Rhode Island’s recycling program, because business supplies just over half of the trash deposited at the Johnston landfill. The problem, DiCenso says, is financial. Most businesses pay a waste hauler monthly to empty the Dumpster out back. To recycle, the same business would need three Dumpsters (one each for trash, paper, and containers), which would be picked up by three different trucks. The extra labor, fuel, and equipment involved in the second and third trips, in most cases, would force an additional fee. Putting himself in a businessman’s place, DiCenso asks, "Why would I want to pay any extra money? I can cram it all into one Dumpster and pay one bill."

The tipping fees charged at the landfill actually encourage businesses not to recycle, adds John Trevor, manager of Resource Recovery’s recycling program. In contracts with Resource Recovery, waste haulers are typically charged, he says, $47-to-$49 per ton of trash. Meanwhile, the haulers are charged $25 a ton for recyclables dropped at the Materials Recycling Facility. This $22-to-$24-per-ton difference is simply not enough to pay for extra trucks to pick up recyclables, Trevor says, especially with the low value of recyclables. With the exception of aluminum cans, which currently sell for $1060 per ton, prices for recycled items don’t come close to covering collection and separation costs. Newsprint sells for $60 a ton, according to Resource Recovery, while mixed paper and junk mail sell for $40 a ton. Meanwhile, clear and amber glass sell for about $17 a ton, but Resource Recovery must pay $22 a ton to dispose of green glass.

One obvious way to increase recycling would be to increase tipping fees. According to Trevor, tipping fees average $67 per ton in Massachusetts, and $50-to-$70 a ton in Connecticut. Another solution would be to reduce or eliminate the $25 a ton recycling fee, he says. A combination could provide a financial incentive for haulers to recycle, Trevor concludes.

To test their ideas, Trevor and DiCenso hope to begin a pilot program to improve small business recycling in North Smithfield. Under the plan, yet to be approved by Resource Recovery, the town would organize a recycling cooperative and then solicit bids to handle the contract for 75 to 100 businesses. A seven-business strip mall, for example, would share Dumpsters, and the winning bidder would service all seven businesses with three trips. The increased efficiency should enable the hauler to lower fees while increasing recycling, DiCenso says. To ensure that recycling actually happens, all material would come to the landfill and the Materials Recycling Facility. To make the program even more attractive, DiCenso and Trevor hope that the state will provide discounted tipping fees.

CleanScape’s Connelly, who oversees some of the little business recycling that does occur in Rhode Island, agrees that trash-tipping fees should be increased. Every year CleanScape recycles 6000 tons of waste from Fleet Financial Services, Foxwoods Resort Casino, local hospitals and colleges, and more than 200 other businesses and institutions. CleanScape doesn’t handle trash, Connelly says, but its customers generate enough recyclables (usually paper) that the firm can save money by removing them from their waste. For smaller, strip mall-sized businesses, Connelly concedes, "There’s definitely a cost to doing the recycling."

Connelly would also like Rhode Island to enforce the law. In 1990, shortly after the state’s recycling law passed, several haulers were fined for arriving at the landfill with mixed loads of trash and recyclables, recalls Connelly, who was Resource Recovery’s recycling manager at the time. But the policing quickly collapsed as DEM and Resource Recovery quarreled over who was responsible. Today, the chore is DEM’s and the state department is doing nothing to enforce compliance.

Terrence Gray, DEM’s assistant director for air, waste, and compliance, freely admits that no business has been cited for failure to recycle during his two years in charge of commercial recycling enforcement. "It’s a staffing issue," he explains. A year and a half ago, DEM hoped to establish a commercial recycling position, but it did not. Former governor Lincoln Almond set a cap on positions at DEM, Gray explains, and the top priorities remain environmental police to patrol parks and marine biologists to help regulate conditions in Narragansett Bay. Nevertheless, Connelly contends, a single DEM officer making random inspections for mixed loads at the landfill could spur a big increase in business recycling.

State law also requires businesses with more than 50 employees to submit a recycling plan to DEM, but this law isn’t enforced, either. If businesses prepared reports, Gray says, "We’d have nobody to review them."

Gray co-chairs the working group that began to examine recycling in January. Because the number of Rhode Island businesses makes it difficult to enforce recycling, he proposes incentives for haulers and transfer station operators. To dump 100 tons at the landfill, Gray suggests, haulers could be required to prove that they recycled 10 tons. And he proposes that transfer stations, like Waste Management Inc.’s Pontiac Avenue facility in Cranston, receive longer operating permits if they can prove they processed a certain quantity of recycled goods. Gray also hopes that the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation can lure companies that use recycled materials to locate in the state and provide a better market for waste paper, plastics, and glass.

Connelly likes Gray’s ideas. Resource Recovery should encourage recycling, Connelly believes, by providing free waste audits and recycling containers for cooperating businesses, and running a statewide public relations campaign, emphasizing that recycling is the right thing to do. That would require beefing up the current three-person recycling staff at Resource Recovery. In the mid-’90s, when the state launched comprehensive recycling, Trevor recalls, 10 people worked on the project.