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("New York MRF" Continued from page 5)
and redeemed for the nickels. David Lupinski, director of the Regional Recycling Center for the Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Authority (OHSW), was one of the first municipal waste/recycling managers to redeem the abandoned deposits. The OHSW Authority has an agreement with commercial redemption centers, whereby the Authority gets five cents for all of the plastic and aluminum beverage containers processed at the 200-ton per day MRF.
MRF sorters throw all the plastic beverage bottles down a shute and into a 300 gallon plastic bag. The aluminum cans go into a container behind the sorter. The authority is licensed as a redemption
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center but does not deal with the beverage distributors, and thus does not get the 2-cent handling fee. The two redemption centers that receive the material from the MRF, sort the plastic and aluminum and collect the handling fee from the beverage distributors.
While the Oneida-Herkermer program removes both plastic beverage bottles and aluminum cans, the Westchester program removes only aluminum cans. Westchester County did an analysis of the containers at the MRF and found that while the volume of glass and plastic deposit bottles warranted an additional sort, hand sorting the glass and plastic deposit bottles was not economically viable. The use of reverse vending machines (rvm),
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to mechanically read the bar codes was then investigated, but the County collects recyclables in packer trucks that crush the plastic bottles rendering them unreadable by the rvm machines. Also, most of the glass bottles are broken.
There is clearly an opportunity for municipal governments in deposit states to generate revenue for their programs or for nonprofit agencies by capturing the nickels (or in the case of Michigan, dimes) on deposit containers that end up in curbside recycling bins.
James J. Hogan is the Director of Environmental Management for Westchester County, NY. He can be reached at JJHA@WestchesterGov.com and at 914-813-5419.
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