Vermonters produce 5.5 pounds of garbage per person per day. Two-thirds of that can be recycled, according to a new study by the Agency of Natural Resources.
The Waste Composition Study, the first of its kind in 10 years, is meant to inform administrators and legislative leaders on how to implement new and proposed waste laws, like Act 148 and an expanded bottle bill.
Act 148, passed in 2012, mandates a phase-out of all organic waste from the landfill waste stream by 2020 — even the onion ends and banana peels you throw in the garbage at home. The proposed bottle bills, which were introduced in both the Senate and the House this spring, would give cash for many more kinds of plastic and glass bottles than currently allowed.
To find out what is in our garbage, the Agency of Natural Resources hired a company to sort through randomly selected sacks of trash. Plastic was separated from glass, organic from electronic, and so on. Plastic was subdivided by recycling code, if possible, as well as form.
About half of all landfill waste is paper and organic material. Another 15 percent is plastic, glass, and electronic waste. Beverage containers alone make up between 1 and 2 percent.
Organic material makes up the greatest proportion of residential waste — 28 percent — a fact not lost on ANR officials, who will be working with waste management districts to implement Act 148. Organics account for about 18 percent of industrial waste. Act 148 mandates that generators of large amounts of organic waste begin composting it in 2014; each year the requirements for who must compost will get stricter, until all organics will be diverted from the landfill by 2020. Industrial sources send 30,000 tons of organics to the landfill each year, which will help state officials get used to diverting organics by the time they have to take on the bigger challenge of residential organic waste.
Bryn Oakleaf, of ANR’s solid waste program, says 70,000 tons a year of residential organic waste is a big deal. “It identifies that the bulk of our work, to me, is really going to be to begin helping residents do backyard composting, buying less food, whatever food can be donated to food shelves, working with our partners over at Farm to Plate, and trying to incorporate backyard composting.”
Paper made up 22 percent of all residential garbage in Vermont, quite a bit more than the national estimate of 16 percent, but comparable to the proportions in Connecticut and lower than those in Delaware. In the last 10 years it declined by about 5 percent, a pattern that study authors attribute to increased recycling and decreased newspaper circulation. Corrugated cardboard, however, increased, possibly because of online orders.
Paper made up an even larger proportion of industrial waste — 28 percent. Much of that is cardboard, which comprises 12 percent of all industrial waste, despite incentives to recycle.
The proportion of plastic in Vermont’s residential waste stream has grown in the last 10 years, but it remains less than the national average. Plastic waste, which comprises 11 percent of residential garbage, was subdivided into numerous categories for the study. Researchers found, for example, that 15 percent of the plastic from residential sources was garbage bags and another 5 percent was retail bags. Plastic film, like shrink wrap, accounted for a whopping quarter of all plastic from residences. About 20 percent of all residential plastic waste was food or drink containers of some kind.
Industrial plastic waste showed slightly different proportions. Plastic film, for example, made up a larger portion of the plastic waste stream — a third.
The expanded bottle bill would nearly double the amount of bottle waste that could be recycled. PET plastic, which has the recycling code of 1 and is the most easily recycled type of plastic, makes up just 5 percent of residential plastic waste and 9 percent of commercial plastic waste. Of the PET plastic, just 6 percent of residential plastic bottles are covered by the current bottle bill. The expanded bottle bill would multiply that amount by seven. The expanded bottle bill would also cover high-density polyethylene bottles, which have virtually no coverage under the current bottle bill.
More waste composition studies are in your garbage’s future, as required by Act 148. Funding is tricky, however. The recent Waste Composition Study cost $75,000, which study authors say is barely enough to do the job.
