WHY ARE WE THROWING MONEY INTO OUR LANDFILL? PART 3

This series of articles is being written to give everyone a realistic picture of what is being thrown away in our Walker Mountain Landfill in the hopes that we can do something about reducing the amounts of recyclables being discarded there. The Georgia Department of Community Affairs’ Solid Waste Characterization Study has given us a most valuable tool to address this issue and I wish to share the information with you through a series of articles on the subject. The March article, however, had some errors in it that I need to correct. Due to one incorrect calculation, all the numbers generated from that total were affected and incorrect. Here are the correct numbers from that article and new ones for the series.

The largest percentage of recyclables being thrown away – paper – represents 34.6% of the total municipal solid waste going to Walker Mountain Landfill. This adds up to 34,051 tons, of which 11,677 tons are non recyclable due to various contaminations. Here is the breakdown of the recyclable paper categories, the cost to dispose of that paper (tipping fees) and the potential lost revenues to our recycling program based on 2006 market values.

MATERIAL	TONS DISPOSED	TIPPING FEE COSTS	MARKET VALUE PER TON	LOST REVENUE POTENTIAL
NEWSPAPER/MAGS	8,930	$ 267,892	$ 57	$ 509,010
CORRUGATED BOXES/PAPERBOARD	7,850	$ 235,510	$ 85	$ 667,250
OFFICE PAPER	2,944	$ 88,316	$100	$ 294,400
MIXED PAPER	2,649	$ 79,484	$ 40	$ 105,960
TOTALS	22,373	$ 671,202		$ 1,576,620

Lost revenue is calculated based on what the market is willing to pay for a grade of paper if it is sent to their mills as feedstock for their use in manufacturing. Most of the Recycling Center’s markets use our paper materials to make some sort of paper rather than other products like insulation, promotional items, etc.

We need to recognize that the chances of capturing every single pound of this recyclable paper in a recycling program is definitely unrealistic. However, with these kinds of volumes, even if we were dealing with being able to capture only 2/3 of the recyclable paper we are still looking at saving over $440,000 in tipping fees and potentially earning just over $1,000,000 in revenues. These are certainly numbers that deserve some serious consideration.

Next month we will look at the other identified recyclables that are going into our landfill in this same manner to get a full picture of what we are throwing away that could be diverted from the waste stream into a recycling program. Again, I hope that this information will give us a new perspective on our recycling efforts in Rome and Floyd County and encourage more people to participate in one of our many recycling programs.