News

September 23, 2004

Completing its proposal for achieving a 30% recycling goal, the Recycling Public Advisory Council zeroed in on the veritable icon of suburbia -- the lawn. Chairman Paul Wilkinson called that component critical to the success of any statewide mandatory recycling program which the gubernatorial panel advocates.

While most residents consider remnants of a freshly mown lawn the epitome of expendableness and autumn leaves as nothing more than a nuisance once they have fallen from the trees, that stuff adds up to a hefty chunk of the material which now finds its way into the three Delaware Solid Waste Authority landfills. Combined with what comes from commercial sources, that amounts to an estimated 95,600 tons a year, according to D.S.M. Environmental Services.

Some 80% of Delaware residents live on properties which have lawns. About two-thirds of those include trees mature enough to produce a significant amount of fallen leaves, the firm found.

After receiving a detailed presentation of a study of the likely effects of a ban on dumping yard waste into the landfills by Ted Siegler, president of the Ascutney, Vt.-based consulting firm, the council at a meeting on Sept. 22 agreed unanimously on five elements to be the

• Have the waste authority provide facilities to recycle material that the private sector is unable to handle. D.S.M. found that the private sector, municipalities and, to an extent, the waste authority itself already is diverting about 50,200 tons a year from the landfills.

• Educate the public about the ecological and other advantages of reusing what is now largely regarded as waste. Mulching and composting are said to be increasing in popularity although they are still far from common practice.

• Authorize the waste authority to charge a fee for receiving and processing the material at its facilities. Those facilities would employ a low-tech form of composting as opposed to simply dumping the material.

After the hearings, the council, the waste authority and the Department of Natural Resources & Environmental Control will prepare a final report and draft legislation to submit to Governor Ruth Ann Minner and the General Assembly before the end of December. Legislation would be required to set up a statewide recycling program. The larger component of the program would deal with recyclable solid waste from residences.

In a separate matter at the meeting, the council agreed to ask the Assembly to vest it with statutory status. It was established by former governor Thomas Carper by executive order and continued by Minner. Wilkinson said having it provided for by law would assure that the council would continue through changes in state administration and to take an active role in the implementation of a recycling program

Siegler said an effective yard waste ban would reduce the amount of yard waste going into the landfills to about a third of what is is now. The dumps would have to continue to receive such things as tree stumps and land-clearing debris and it is presumed that some of the contraband material would sneak through with the general trash.

Wilkinson said the stakes are high. A ban on yard waste, he told Delaforum would result in diverting about 12% of residential solid waste and 18% if commercial sources are included, as D.S.M. and the council agree should happen. The combined rate would make up more than half of the 30% goal.

Siegler acknowledged, however, that implementing the ban would not be simply a matter of proclaiming it.

For starters, there is no universal definition of what constitutes yard waste. Grass and leaves are generally acceptable inclusions within the term. Most brush also falls in there. Tree trimmings, vegetation and other organic materials are iffy. After discussing the point, the panel agreed to defer it until it comes time to write the proposed legislation.

What is meant by composting also is open to dispute. While describing what the suggested waste authority facilities might be like, Siegler spoke of dumping material and stirring or turning it three or four times a summer. Dick Pike, president of Grizzly's Landscape Supply & Services, of Milford, said a more complex process is required to produce a result which meets professional standards to be marketed as a composting product. Siegler estimated the cost of equipment to operate the facilities to be around $100,000; Pike said $750,000 is a more likely pricetag.

Given that collected material has to be transported to the facilities, Siegler said between five and seven would likely be needed. He did not speculate on where they might be located.

The D.S.M. study estimated that it would cost a commercial trash hauler $4 to $5 a month to provide separate yard waste collections once a week. It would be about $1 more if the waste authority charged a fee to receive the material. That raised the question of whether a householder would be willing to pay the additional amount if that cost were simply factored into the hauler's overall fee or if the firms would be amenable to the bookkeeping required to differentiate among customers wanting various combination of general trash, recyclables and yard waste pick-ups.

Not to be overlooked, Siegler said, is the potential for composting to create an odor problem. Avoiding that, he said, is dependent upon coming up with a proper ratio between carbon and nitrogen in the pile. Since grass, which produces nitrogen while decomposing and leaves, which provide carbon, for the most part end up in the piles in different seasons, a composter would have to find other sources of carbon during the summer.

Although landscaping and tree service firms probably would be willing to collect yard waste from households willing to pay a fee sufficient for that to be profitable, there is a question of what they would do with the material. The D.S.M. survey found that only 4% of the grass, 20% of the leaves and virtually none of the tree trimmings they now handle ends up in the landfills. However, Siegler said, the firms surveyed "were reluctant to say" what they do with the rest.

Donald Mulrine, the mayor of Newport, said that requiring municipalities which collect trash to bear the additional cost of collecting and recycling yard waste would be "another unfunded mandate" their taxpayers would have to support. At present, at least nine Delaware municipalities, including Newport, do collect yard waste and some, not including Newport, provide a low-tech form of composting. The material produced is then offered without charge to anyone who comes to fetch it, but relatively few people have accepted that offer and the disposal piles are growing.

Wilkinson cautioned that the matter of how much money the Assembly would be asked to provide to help finance start-up costs, particularly for municipalities, is likely to be a determinant factor in whether or not legislation establishing the proposed program is enacted.

While acknowledging that all that amounts to a challenge in establishing a Delaware program, D.S.M. pointed out that 23 states now have some form of yard waste ban, some of which go back to the early 1990s. Delaware's three neighbors, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, are included among those states.

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