Making Green From Garbage | The WBJ takes a look behind the scenes of trash removal in Central Mass.
Most of us don’t spend much time thinking about trash, beyond a vague sense of obligation to toss our soda cans in the recycle bin instead of the trash can.
But in Central Massachusetts, as in most places, the solid waste and recycling industry is big business. It encompasses a vast web of mom-and-pop companies, huge publicly traded corporations, public and private interests and a customer base that includes every resident and every business.
The trash business as it exists today is a relatively young industry. Steve Changaris, the regional manager of the National Solid Waste Management Association, said that up until the 1970s and 1980s, the business was “more horizontal.”
“Every town had a dump,” he said. “And you know what the problem with that was — they were all dumps.”
That was the era of Love Canal and other well-publicized environmental disasters caused by poorly run, toxin-leaching disposal sites. Partly in reaction, Changaris said, public officials started looking for new waste strategies. That meant centralized lined landfills and waste-to-energy plants fed by the trash streams of many communities, and even multiple states.
Garbage Central
The largest landfill in Central Massachusetts is located in Westminster. Town Coordinator Karen Murphy said trash from all over New England ends up in town, and that means money from all over New England does, too.
Waste Management Inc., the Texas-based company that runs the landfill, pays for the privilege of dumping garbage, disposing of residents’ trash for free and also paying a fee based on the tonnage of garbage that comes in. Last year, Murphy said, Westminster made $1.5 million on the deal.
“It’s definitely been an advantage for the town,” she said.
On the other end of the trash disposal stick is neighboring Gardner. Until 2005, Gardner had its own landfill as a convenient site for residents and a source of income for the city. But it filled up, and, like many host communities, Gardner chose not to expand the facility or open a new one. Now, the city’s trash goes to Westminster.
Bernard Sullivan, director of Gardner’s health department, said the city has kept the amount of trash it ships to Westminster under control with a high-profile recycling program.
In 2008, the city had the highest recycling rate in Central Massachusetts, 66 percent, according to figures from the state Department of Environmental Protection. The rate was inflated by the disposal of compostable debris after the 2008 ice storm, but Sullivan said the city really is good at recycling.
Like 32 other Central Massachusetts communities, Gardner uses a “pay-as-you-throw” system that charges residents based on how much trash they toss, giving them an incentive to keep recyclables out of the waste stream. The state numbers show that 12 of the 15 local cities and towns with the highest recycling rates have pay-as-you-throw.
But Sullivan said there’s also another factor at play in Gardner’s high rate.
“Because there was an operating landfill in the town, the residents knew what trash was, that it just doesn’t magically disappear, that you end up with a mountain of it somewhere,” he said.
Zero Net
By recycling, communities can reduce the cost of trash disposal, but they typically can’t actually turn a profit. And that’s generally true for businesses as well, according to Mark Pellegrino of P. Pellegrino Trucking Co. Inc. in Shrewsbury.
Pellegrino’s company hauls both municipal and business waste, and he said he charges for the pickup of recyclables but not the disposal. He said haulers may make a little money selling the material to companies that sort and recycle it, but they typically arrange contracts where they don’t get much for it when the market is good and don’t pay much to get rid of it when the market is bad, leaving most of the risk in the hands of the recycler.
Depending on their size and what sort of trash they generate, Pellegrino said, some businesses can save money by diverting some of their garbage into a recycling program. In some cases, he said, they may generate enough relatively high-value cardboard and paper to entice a hauler to pick up all their recyclables, including less valuable plastic, for free.
The destination of waste once it’s been put on the curb or in a dumpster isn’t always obvious. For 38 Central Massachusetts communities, the answer is a waste-to-energy incinerator, most likely the facility known as the Wheelabrator in Millbury run by Waste Management Inc. that can burn up to 1,500 tons a day. For others it could be the Westminster facility (daily capacity: 1,400 tons), one of a handful of smaller landfills in the region, a different part of the state, or another state entirely.
Waste Management clearly dominates the waste industry landscape in the area, running the biggest destinations for garbage, handling municipal pickup for many communities and running some transfer stations and recycling facilities. But there’s no shortage of smaller competitors in all those spaces.
Pluses And Minuses
Sullivan said he’s thinking hard about the qualities of various companies as Gardner considers whether to keep Waste Management on as its municipal hauler after the current contract expires.
“I’m not sure they’re always the most creative,” he said. “I think innovation almost has to happen more in the smaller firms… Dealing with a smaller vendor, you’re much closer to the local community. The vendor, he has to face the customer at church on Sunday or in the supermarket.”
On the other hand, Sullivan said there’s a certain confidence that comes with dealing with the big guy.
“If you have it, they have some subsidiary that can handle it,” he said.
In 2006, the state produced 3.49 million tons of residential waste, 5.66 million in waste from businesses and 4.65 million in construction and demolition debris, according to the DEP. Of that 13.89 million ton total, 7.34 million was “diverted,” meaning reused, recycled, composted, burned as biomass fuel or used for cover and shaping material at landfills. The other 6.55 million was burned or buried.
According to John Fisher, head of the Bureau of Waste Prevention at the DEP, the state exported 1.8 million tons of trash in the past year and imported 240,000 tons. He said Massachusetts can be both an importer and an exporter because of the complicated way trash moves from one place to another. The destination of any given truckload of garbage depends partly on what company is moving it, he said
“Waste Management’s going to send waste to a Waste Management facility,” Fisher said. “That’s a factor — where they have their facilities.”
Changaris said trash bound out of state gets packed into a truck or train car and can travel as long as nine days to a landfill in upstate New York, Pennsylvania or even Ohio or Virginia.
Think Globally
For recyclables the trip can be far longer. Ben Harvey of E.L. Harvey & Sons in Westborough said the company’s large transfer facilities send plastics, metal and paper to mills all over the eastern United States and even overseas. The international mobility of recyclables leaves companies like Harvey vulnerable to global economic forces, and when worldwide production fell in 2008, the market for recycled materials collapsed. Harvey said the company is able to sell the materials it takes in now, but a year ago it was simply sitting on them, waiting for the market to rise again. State law bans sending most recyclable materials back into the waste stream.
Despite the partial recovery of the recyclables markets, Harvey said the company is still suffering. Generally, a down economy means less trash, and the real estate bust in particular has hit the company hard.
Still, Harvey said, from a larger perspective, his business lets him see one positive side of the down economy.
“There is less waste being generated nationwide now,” he said.
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