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Solid Waste
Going Green
Going Green: Solid Waste
Sixty-six percent of all solid waste in Onondaga County that used to go to a landfill is being recycled, while nationally that percentage is only in the upper 20s. The Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency is running an advertising campaign looking for more.
“And we have measured in our waste stream here that there is a harvestable amount of paper, recyclable paper in the trash. So, even though we have these great recycling recovery rates and we have a community that participates so well, in fact overall 98 percent of the community participates, there still is a real opportunity to recover more newspaper, more third class or junk mail, more magazines, more cardboard even,” said Tom Rhoads, OCCRA Executive Director.
But the bottom has dropped out of the recycling market with prices for recycled goods about 25 percent of what they were still Tom Rhoads says recycling makes sense.
“So we're talking about recycling helping us conserve energy, helping us conserve natural resources, helping us reduce greenhouse gases and also helping us reduce the cost of solid waste disposal” said Rhoads.
Even though that means subsidizing the recycling operation.
“We have a market-based price with them so when markets are low we have to give them support for their activities in processing the materials. We've had to chip in a little bit but that's still than what it would cost us if we disposed of those materials in a landfill or a waste to energy plant,” said Rhoads.
And when the market turns around OCRRA will receive some money back. Rhoads says people can make that happen by buying more recycled products.
“Because we also have in this economic discussion a tremendous amount of purchasing power. What we all buy really does change the economy and if we work together at improving things for the environment by buying recycled, participating in recycled a lot can happen,” said Rhoads.
