INSIDE

Local recycling options multiplying

By Meg Olson

The local transfer station is adding recycling options to help keep costs down for consumers and more material out of landfills.

“We’re adding a bunch of new materials to the list at the end of this month,” said garbage company owner Art Wilkowski.

A holding area has been built to accept brush at a reduced disposal rate of $70 per ton, as opposed to the $250 the transfer station now charges for waste. “When we get enough we’re going to have a tub grinder come in and grind it up and then we’ll have chips available,” Wilkowski said.

Yard waste will also qualify for the reduced disposal rate but will need to be kept separate from brush. The yard waste will be packed in containers and hauled to a composting facility in Lynden. “We can’t compost here. I would like to at some point but the county would have to make some changes,” Wilkowski said ruefully. He predicts it could be half a year for his proposal to eliminate curbside recycling and replace it with a self-haul program to get through a county review process.

Yard waste and brush containers will also be available for a fall gardening cleanup, but again the two types of material can’t go into one bin. “It would cost maybe $100 to $150 to have a container delivered you can fill entirely with branches and we’ll haul it away,” Wilkowski said.

A new program to recycle sheetrock will save homeowners and builders on the cost of getting rid of scrap. The transfer station will charge $180 per ton rather than $250 for clean scrap sheetrock which Wilkowski said they will take to a recycler in New Westminster.

Work is now underway at the transfer station to build containment areas to house a new recycling program for electronics, a source of concern in landfills where they can be a source of heavy metals and lead that leach into groundwater. A state law adopted in March 2006 gives manufacturers of electronics until 2009 to pay for both the collection and recycling of their products.

“What the county is trying to do is get the infrastructure in place and I’ve found a way to do it here,” Wilkowski said. The electronic products, including computers, cellular telephones, monitors and televisions, and stereo equipment, will be packed in totes and taken to a recycling facility in Bellingham. “They actually recycle them, take them apart there,” Wilkowski said, explaining that he had done some research to allay concerns that the used electronics were shipped to other countries, merely relocating the environmental problem.

Consumers will need to pay the standard cost per pound to dispose of their electronics, at least until the new law comes into effect in 2009.
Motor oil, batteries and fluorescent light bulbs are already accepted at the transfer station and taken to facilities for proper disposal or recycling and Wilkowski said changes underway to infrastructure at the dump might make more options available.