South Shore Recycling Cooperative - June 2020 Updates

SSRC Updates June 2020 May Board meeting notes, updates      Good Point Recycling      SMRP Grant prep, update      Recycling cost concerns June Board meeting notes, updates      Bay State Textiles “Toy Box” pilot      EBoard:  Cafferty elected Chairman      Longtime leader Brown recognized Pandemic program progress HHW Mega-Event keeps south shore waters safe Reusable bag “ban”, plastic ban suspensions continue Bottle and can redemption. Bag recycling resumes Spring cleaning for universal waste sheds Munis seek regulatory relief from recycling costs STB sides with Recyclers over unfair rail practice 3 South Shore classes among Green Team award winners DEP Reduce and Reuse Workgroup tackles culture shift Paper markets rebounding; containers sliding Landfill battery storage supplements solar income Top consumer brands falling short of recycling goals Words of wisdom from SWANA and MassRecycle chiefs  May Board meeting notes and updates On May 6, we held our first “at home” meeting on Zoom.  It was refreshing to see those with video.  Robin Ingenthron, founder and CEO of Good Point Recycling, updated us on the progress the e-waste recycler had made at its Brockton site.  Based in Middlebury, VT, the 20 year old company is R2 Certified, and takes pride in being a “Fair Trade Recycler”. He reported that April collections were down 75% from the previous year.  Flammable lithium batteries in electronics have now become problematic, especially for companies that shred equipment rather than disassembling.  GPR re-sells working units (about 20% of equipment), and deconstructs and sells the components of the rest to the extent possible. They expect to be listed on State Contract FAC82 soon, and will offer rates lower than the FAC82 pricing to SSRC members. GPS is ramping up for solar panel recovery.  80% of retired PV panels are reusable, especially in equatorial areas.  Old panels can provide clean power in developing countries for decades beyond their retirement in the US.  The demand is great. Contact Robin at 802-377-9166, robin@good-point.net. Top SMRP Grant prep DEP Municipal Assistance Coordinator Todd Koep noted that DEP grant application were due by June 10.  Both he and Director Claire offered to assist Member towns with submissions. Claire shared a spreadsheet with estimates of Recycling Dividend Program (RDP) points earned by Member towns, to make sure nobody missed any. She thanked Bay State Textiles, which paid for ads on WATD FM, and help our Member Towns qualify for 3 separate points. Update: All our towns that intended to apply for grants got them in on time.  Statewide, 262 municipalities applied for $6 million in grants, of which $3.35 million was for RDP. RDP Awards will be announced and deposited by September, the rest by November.   Recycling cost concerns At the request of two Member towns, Director Galkowski reviewed the costs for single-stream recycling and found undocumented price increases.  In January, WM switched from index pricing to “actual value” for paper, the single biggest component of single stream. She convened a widely attended meeting in April to discuss that and other concerns.  At the direction of the group, she drafted a letter to DEP Commissioner Suuberg asking that MRFs be monitored more closely. (see related article) Top June Board meeting notes and updates Sixteen people attended our June 17 Board meeting. We are getting in the Zoom groove.   Bay State Textiles piloting “Toy Box” Paul Curry founded Bay State Textiles in 2005.  The textile recycler was the first to offer rebates, and has been paying $100/ton to most of our towns for many years. BST recently upsized to a 25,000 square foot building in Kingston. They also have a warehouse in Waterbury, CT and an operation in Puerto Rico.  That capacity has enabled BST to continue to collect and store 1.3 million pounds of textiles during the pandemic, while international markets are closed. BST will be ready to move it as soon as markets reopen. BST serves 270 municipalities.  700 schools in MA and CT have been paid $350,000 in rebates through the School Box Program to date. Its 48 employees now process 23 million pounds of textiles per year. They receive a lot of material in the pink Simple Recycling bags.  Materials are sorted and sold in Texas, Central America, Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Toys comprise about 5% of the material BST receives.  Rather than dispose of them, Curry has found buyers in Mexico, South America and the Middle East for hard plastic toys, sports equipment, dolls, trucks and the like. He would like to do pilot some “Toy Box” trailers on the South Shore, the same size as the textile containers. They will offer rebates, to be determined.  Toys need to fit in the container opening.  They cannot sell games and puzzles. Contact Bay State Textiles at 617-877-2432, or kerrie.baystatetextiles@gmail.com Top   EBoard election Three of our current officers ran for re-election.  Founding member and longtime Chairman/Vice Chair  Merle Brown of Cohasset stepped down from the helm.  Scituate DPW Director Kevin Cafferty, who served as Chairman from 2013-2016, ran for the post. The one-woman Nominating Committee, Angela Dahlstrom of Abington, introduced the slate of officers for FY21, which was elected unanimously.  Our FY21 EBoard members are:             Chairman                    Kevin Cafferty (Scituate)             Vice Chairman            Paul Basler (Kingston)             Treasurer                    Arlene Dias (Hanson)             Secretary                    Jean Landis Naumann (Kingston) Chairman Cafferty would like to get all Member towns to participate.  He proposed that we continue to use Zoom for alternate meetings after we can meet in person again.   Longtime leader Merle Brown recognized Chairman Merle Brown’s twenty-two years of service to the SSRC were recognized by Plymouth County Treasurer Tom O’Brien and MassDEP’s Janine Bishop. O’Brien noted Brown’s decades of service to the Town of Cohasset and to the SSRC, and provided a glimpse into the legislative formation of the Cooperative.  When he was a freshman State Representative, John McNabb, another founder from Cohasset, asked him to sponsor legislation to establish the SSRC as a separate government body.  Tom filed the bill and saw it through.  (His telling of the story is much more entertaining) Janine Bishop served as our MassDEP Municipal Assistance Coordinator for several years of Merle’s tenure.  She said “the SSRC was her best friend as a MAC.  Merle is the SSRC”.  She recalled his years of volunteer recruitment and help with the massive recycling efforts at the Marshfield Fair, which the SSRC facilitated with a grant from MassDEP. Attendees were treated to a slide show of past events during Merle’s service.  Merle intends to continue to be involved with the organization. Thanks to the pandemic, Merle’s leader plaque went out in the mail the next day. Top Pandemic program progress Chairman Cafferty led a discussion on the impact of the pandemic on our trash and recycling: Transfer stations remain open with services approaching normal.  Recycling centers have reopened or are about to reopen. Kingston is considering closing the transfer station 2 additional days per week due to budget cuts.  This will present logistical issues including lack of storage and more crowding. Towns are seeing a 10-30% increase in residential trash. Business trash is down. Some towns are still not taking C&D to avoid handling payments. Swap shops and bottle and can redemption collections are still closed. Our curbside towns were ahead of the curve in switching to fully automated cart collection.  This enabled trash and recycling collection continue uninterrupted throughout the pandemic. Other news: Donation centers such as Salvation Army and Savers have reopened with restrictions  Top HHW Mega- event keeps south shore waters safe  South Shore Recycling Cooperative Member Towns had planned seven household hazardous waste collections this spring.  Like most everything else, the pandemic changed those plans. Residents were nearly left holding their old gasoline, pool chemicals and pesticides, but for the valiant efforts of the SSRC, the Town of Cohasset, the South Shore Music Circus, and DPWs in Scituate, Duxbury, Pembroke and Weymouth. Our one and only HHW “Mega” collection this spring featured perfect weather, great teamwork, and residents who followed the (many) rules.  With no idea what to expect after 6 event cancellations this spring, we were prepared for a big crowd.  This seventh one was also originally cancelled, then revived and relocated to the South Shore Music Circus, leaving only a week to publicize.  The SSMC showed outstanding community spirit and generosity in allowing the use of its perfect parking lot.  This was the first event the SSRC conducted with MXI Environmental, which ran an impressive operation.  Staff from Scituate,  Duxbury, Pembroke and Weymouth, together with SSRC’s Executive Director, and Hazardous Waste Specialist Lorraine Mavrogeorge (pictured), hummed like a well-oiled machine, arriving early, masked and well prepared. Two police officers from the Plymouth County Sheriff’s office kept order. Nearly 400 residents came from all 16 SSRC Member towns with trunks full of hazardous waste.  The event enabled the proper disposal of about 2000 gallons of dangerous liquids and 3500 pounds of toxic solids, protecting transfer station staff, sanitation workers, fire fighters and our groundwater. View pictures here, with thanks to Molly Lynch St. John of Hull. HHW collections will start up again in September.  For more information, go to ssrcoop.info. Top Reusable bag “ban”, plastic ban suspensions continue MassDEP and MassDPH have not yet responded to a request to lift the prohibition on reusable bags, and reinstate local bag bans and fees.  The Conservation Law Foundation letter points out the lack of evidence that either policy reduces the risk of spread of coronavirus, yet both cause harm to the environment.  It was signed by over forty organizations including the SSRC, environmental organizations, grassroots groups, and businesses. The letter, sent on May 28, also asked for reinstatement of Bottle Bill enforcement, which was announced the following day.  To weigh in, contact Commissioner Suuberg at MassDEP. Top Bottle and can redemption, bag recycling resumes MassDEP began requiring retailers to redeem customers’ 5¢ bottle and can deposits on June 5. MassDEP and the AG’s Office had suspended enforcement of the rule in late March. Normally, stores that sell that sell drinks with deposits must redeem returns, as required by law. The suspension was put in place to free up employees to focus on tasks such as keeping stores clean and food and other essential items in stock. To report retailers that are not complying with the redemption law, contact Sean Sylver at MassDEP. Many retailers had also suspended plastic bag recycling to focus on safety.  Several have reinstated these voluntary programs, including Shaw’s/Star Market, Stop and Shop, Hannaford, and Big Y.  If you know of others, contact Claire, and she’ll update the web page. Top Spring cleaning for Universal Waste Sheds Adapted from the Covanta Spring 2020 Newsletter  A properly managed universal waste shed is key to the collection of mercury-containing devices, as well as complying with disposal regulations. The Center for EcoTechnology created a Best Management Practices Video and Document for operating a UW Shed. Takeaways include: Clearly label your shed as a universal waste collection area, and each with the type of material and accumulation start date. Provide clear instruction to your residents on what materials should go in the shed. Loose mercury should be picked up at home or brought to a HHW event. Stock your shed has plastic pails and a mercury spill kit, and train staff on how to use these materials for spill cleanup and secondary containment. Contact Complete Recycling Solutions to schedule a mercury pickup at 1-866-277-9797 x705.  For towns that have a disposal contract with SEMASS, this is funded through the Material Separation Plan.   CRS will bill your town directly if you are not covered by the SEMASS MSP.  Veolia in Stoughton also provides this service, 781-341-6080. Top Munis seek regulatory relief from recycling costs   Last winter, two Member towns asked SSRC Director Claire Galkowski to review their single stream recycling bills. Another non-Member town had also contacted her about it.  Galkowski discovered that, despite relatively stable markets, recycling costs to municipalities had increased by about 25% since the fall. Twenty five municipal and regional officials met by Zoom in April to discuss these sharply cost increases.  Galkowski presented a primer on how single stream Blended Values (BVs) are calculated. She showed how two components of BV can skew costs if they aren’t accurate. One component is the Commodity Composition (CC).  When compared with our 7 towns that source separate, and with the compositions reported to the Northeast Recycling Council by 18 facilities, commodities with lower values appear to be assigned higher weights in our single stream munis’ BVs, and vice versa. WM weights cardboard at 13.5%, while NERC reported 25.1% in Q1, and our dropoff towns averaged 25.3% in 2019.  When Galkowski asked WM for documentation on how CC is determined, the contract manager did not provide it. The other component is the Commodity Value (CV).  Contracts specify an independent index for paper pricing (PPW54), which reported paper value between -$5 and zero since Feb. 2019.  In January, WM changed its CV for paper, weighted at 44.5% of the single stream mix, to “Actual Value” (AV), which it pegged at -$23/ton, without notice.  By March, WM put the AV at -$51/ton, even as PPW54 was at -$10 to -$5.  Galkowski’s attempt to obtain documentation was again rebuffed. The group agreed to send a letter to MassDEP requesting that recycling facilities be required to report material tonnages by commodity, so CC’s used in contracts could be verified.  It also asked that index pricing be used in billing municipalities for recyclables.  (This can be included in the contract terms as well.) Twelve municipalities signed on to a letter requesting more MassDEP oversight of these practices: Abington, Belmont, Brockton, Franklin, Halifax, Hamilton, Hanson, Milton, Norwell, Pembroke, Rockland and Westford, as well as the SSRC.  The MMA is drafting a letter as well. Coincidentally, MassDEP just opened its solid waste regulations for review and update last month.  Director Galkowski identified 310CMR 16.04 and 16.05, which address reporting requirements by recycling facilities. Member towns are advised to have Galkowski review new recycling contracts prior to signing. Top STB Sides with Recyclers Over Unfair Rail Practice Waste Advantage, May 4, 2020 (excerpts) Following a hard-fought battle over excessive demurrage charges and inconsistent rail service, scrap recyclers won a major victory. The Surface Transportation Board (STB) rebuked the railroads for unreasonable practices, non-transparent, inaccurate billing, and an unfair dispute resolution process. “Unreasonable practices by railroads have cost the scrap recycling industry tens of millions of dollars annually, and caused interruptions in the manufacturing supply chain,” said Billy Johnson, chief lobbyist for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI). “ISRI and its members fought for a level playing field and to have their voices heard, and won.” Following the implementation of precision schedule railroading at the start of 2019 by the railroads, shippers began facing demurrage charges hundreds of times larger than in previous years. Additionally, shippers had no way to challenge these charges because the railroads maintained inaccurate and confusing billing information. Based on the STB decisions, railroads must develop more accurate billing, reliable and reasonable practices to avoid demurrage charges, and make it easier for shippers to challenge those charges. “The STB’s rulings will allow for a better and more fair partnership between recyclers and railroads,” concluded Johnson. More Top State Officials Announce School 'Green Team' Awards Three South Shore classes among the winners 6/16/2020, Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (excerpts) State environmental officials recognized students from 44 schools for outstanding environmental actions as members of the “Green Team,” a statewide environmental education program sponsored by MassDEP. 391 classes at 341 schools joined the Green Team this school year, a record for the 19 year old program. Students took part in a range of activities, including expanding school recycling programs, collecting textiles for donation and recycling, composting organic waste from the cafeteria and using it to grow vegetables, and otherwise reducing their carbon footprint. These activities incorporated science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), reading, writing, art, and other non-classroom projects. Participating teachers received classroom posters, lesson plans, recycling tips and other resources. 33 schools received recycling equipment to initiate or expand school recycling programs. Eighteen received “Idle-Free Zone” signs to remind drivers to turn off their engines. 44 classes received prizes for their efforts, including three from SSRC Member Towns. Congratulations to the following classes, which won a remote performance by environmental “edu-tainer” Jack Golden:   Abington Middle School          Lauren Peruzzi             Grade 7 Cohasset High School              Peter Afanasiw            Grades 9-12 Hingham High School              Shayna Miller              Grades 6-8 To participate in the 2020-2021 school year, teachers may sign up  here.    More Top DEP Reduce & Reuse Work Group tackles culture shift As MassDEP crafts the 2020-2030 Solid Waste Master Plan, a new Work Group it creates has already hit the ground running.  Nicknamed the “R&R Working Group”, this active forum, led by rising star Erin Victor, is neither resting nor relaxing.  Launched in early March, the group has met 5 times to survey the reuse landscape and set priorities.  Participants include stakeholders such as textile reclaimers, donation-based charities and waste reduction advocates. R&R is tasked with developing regulations, policies and programs to expand source reduction, reuse, and repair to inform the MassDEP Reduce and Reuse Strategic Plan. The group identified the following priority materials: single use packaging, building materials, textiles, furniture, and household durable goods. Participants will develop strategies to overcome barriers to creating a culture of source reduction and reuse, and extended producer responsibility. Join the discussion and learn about upcoming meetings by sending an email  here. Top Paper markets rebounding; containers sliding After climbing from $25/ton in January to $120 in May, the high price of cardboard (PS11) In the Northeast US fell to $85/ton this month, according to Secondary Material Markets index. The grade was trading at about $30-35/ton one year ago.  Supply and demand changes driven by the coronavirus pandemic were responsible for the increases. The average value of mixed paper (PS54) is has risen to $20-25/ton over the past 2 months, after languishing for over a year between -$10 and zero. The value of sorted, baled aluminum cans in the Northeast is unchanged this month, at 37 to 40¢/lb. It’s dropped about 33% since December. Plastic grade prices have seen slight declines since May, and larger drops in value since December, but continue to be valuable commodities.  Clear HDPE (#2) is by far the most desirable, selling for an average of $780/ton in June, down from over $1200 in December. PET (#1) follows at about $160/ton, and colored HDPE at about $90/ton. Mixed plastics (#3-7) are in the basement, at about -$60/ton. Top Landfill battery storage supplements solar income By Matthew Bandyk, Waste Dive, May 26, 2020 (excerpts) Massachusetts-based Kearsarge Energy has completed dozens of solar projects.  Early this year, its first solar-plus-storage project came online at a closed landfill in Amesbury. The developer made this foray due to incentives launched by the state, under which storage installations are treated as an “adder” that increases the rate at which the solar panels are compensated for the electricity they supply to the grid. The storage component adds another revenue stream to a solar project, while taking up relatively little additional space. Battery storage provides services for the grid that wholesale electricity markets will pay for beyond the value of the electricity itself. These include tapping the batteries to regulate the frequency of the grid so power lines are not overloaded, and “peak shaving” – discharging the batteries at times of high electricity demand. More Top consumer brands falling behind on recycling goals, failing to avert plastic pollution None of the 50 companies evaluated by shareholder advocacy group As You Sow earned higher than a B- on recycling, reusability or compostability goals. Multiple companies pushed back on the report.  Article Top Words of wisdom from SWANA and MassRecycle chiefs David Biderman, CEO of the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA): "Local governments are going to be under fiscal pressure.  Expenses are up, revenue is down. We have to really be smart about what programmatic changes we make in response to this very serious fiscal environment that we’re all going to be facing." (Waste Dive/SWANA Palooza) Gretchen Carey, President of MassRecycle: “Our response to the pandemic has proven that we can adapt when necessary.  Many of us are not willing to go back to the previous status quo. Supply chains need to be more resilient; local is better if we want to ensure our independence and continued survival. Covid has given us an opportunity to try living more lightly, with less commuting and more creativity, We should incorporate the lessons we have learned into our future.” (EBC NE COVID /SW innpacts webinar) Top Subscribe to this newsletter and/or event notices here Go to the SSRC website here Like and follow the SSRC on