County Landfill Program Encourages Recycling

SEATTLE (Waste Advantage): A Chocolay Township resident was surprised Wednesday morning with a knock on her door and a $25 gift card to a local business from the Marquette County Solid Waste Management Authority.

As part of a new recycling incentive program, landfill operations lead Josh Wales selected the residence of Diane Phillips after seeing her recycling container at the curb, correctly filled with broken down cardboard and other fiber material.

Phillips said she was taken offguard, but she believes recycling is important, due to the landfill’s limited life span.

“(Knowing about the landfill problems) really has made us do it more,”Phillips said. “I think on our own we would be a little lazier, we might throw cans away and different things, but I’ve gotten better over the years and it’s easy. And it’s great, I think it’s great for everybody.”

The recycling incentive program will continue to reward one resident per month in each of the 16 participating municipalities.

Wales said “every little bit helps,” adding that landfill diversion is important due to the expense of using land for that purpose.

The estimated cost to site one acre of landfill space is $500,000 per acre, according to the MCSWMA.

“I have two little daughters,” Wales said. “What’s going to be left for them?”

Phillips said recycling weekly ends up being a lot of material. “It’s not a small thing, everybody that does it, you don’t think about it,”Phillips said. “If we could do that in more areas in our life, of how this makes a difference, it would be a better world. … I think we’re fortunate we live in such a beautiful place and that we can help with the environment, like, that is really a big deal.”

Wales said he chose the Phillips’ residence because the cardboard material was clean, neatly folded and broken down and properly separated.

It was the week for fiber collection in the MCSWMA’s dual-stream system, which alternates between rigid and fiber recycling materials. Fiber is paper and cardboard materials, rigid is plastics and metals.

Landfill Director Brad Austin said the goal of the recycling incentive program is to educate, reward and encourage recycling, and he hopes people talk to their friends and neighbors about it.

Recycling participation rates in Marquette County are about 12-15 percent, which represents the amount of recycled material compared to the total waste tonnage, Austin said. The goal across the state is to increase that rate to at least 30 percent.

Recycling not only benefits the environment, Austin added, but also saves natural resources and energy, extends the life of the landfill and provides a source of revenue to keep the recycling program healthy and budget neutral.

Increasing participation is important to allow for improvements to the program, including an eventual goal of moving to a single-stream system, which would require a significant investment in equipment.

Courtesy: https://wasteadvantagemag.com