Few people take note of how much waste they regularly generate, let alone how much waste is produced when their individual consumer habits play out at the community scale.
Currently, because of a combination of the holidays and COVID-19, local waste generation is surging.
How exactly does the volume of waste change during the holidays?
According to Jennifer Richardson, Mesa County’s Solid Waste and Sustainability Division director, Mesa County residents are throwing away an average of 6.5 pounds of trash per person — every single day of the year. That amount tends to go up during the holidays.
For instance, many people bring cooking oil to the county’s hazardous waste facility after Thanksgiving, which gets recycled either as fuel or a component in the animal feed of a local pig farmer. In addition, the hazardous waste facility usually sees a boom in electronics after Christmas.
During this time of year, the county’s composting facility receives leaves and, soon, Christmas trees will begin arriving.
That green waste is diverted from the landfill — where a lack of air exchange, sunlight, and water would prevent it from decomposing — and becomes one of three compost products sold by the county: a nutrient-rich product great for gardening, an ultra-fine product ideal for things like golf courses and athletic fields, or wood mulch.
Curbside Recycling Indefinitely, Inc., the City of Grand Junction’s privately owned and operated recycling program, also sees an increase in recycled material around this time of year — especially cardboard from packaging and gift boxes.
COVID-19 IMPACTS
What makes this year exceptional is that COVID-19 is magnifying many of the usual patterns of increased waste that occur around the holidays.
“We’ve seen a really big uptick in cardboard because people are staying at home more and shopping online more, and all of those items are coming packaged in cardboard boxes,” said Merissa Snyder, the Community Outreach Liaison of CRI.
This year, CRI has also seen an increase in single-use plastics like plastic bags from grocery and other stores, after some stores banned them during the pandemic.
“I think that probably has something to do with COVID as well because people aren’t allowed to bring their reusables into shops as much as they (otherwise) would,” noted Snyder.
On the bright side, Snyder said CRI has also seen an increase in new visitors to the recycling drop-off location through the pandemic, likely because people are taking advantage of their time at home to de-clutter.
The drop-off is located inside the Grand Junction City Maintenance Campus, 333 West Avenue, and is free and open to anyone six days per week.
Curbside Recycling Indefinitely, Inc. isn’t the only company to see a jump in visitors.
The number of people heading to the county landfill has increased by nearly 15% compared to last year, according to Richardson.
FACILITIES REMAINED OPEN
Richardson said it is fortunate that, with a few administrative changes, the landfill, composting facility and hazardous waste facility have remained open since March, the first month of the pandemic.
The main adjustment was reducing hours for the composting facility, from five days a week down to four.
Richardson made that move to keep her staff separated into distinct teams to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 in case of an outbreak.
Across the state and country, the pandemic has stressed waste management operation — especially recycling programs. Because of concerns about COVID outbreaks among employees, staffing limitations, municipal budget deficits and low market prices for recycled materials, many cities have had to abandon green waste and traditional recycling programs during the pandemic.
The unique structure of Grand Junction’s recycling program has protected it from the financial concerns squeezing some other cities’ programs. Recycling is funded by a fee — about $1.75 — that is paid out of the monthly trash bills of all trash customers in Grand Junction.
“No matter what the markets bear out there, we have set up funding and used trash customers to make sure there’s enough funding to cover that recycling program,” said Darren Starr, the City of Grand Junction’s Street Systems and Solid Waste manager.
Some other municipalities are struggling because revenues from recycling rarely offset costs for collection and shipping.
“There have been a lot of bummer news reports about the recycling industry over the last couple of years,” Snyder said. “But because of the nature of our program, we’ve just basically been unaffected by most of it. We’re doing really good — our material is not being landfilled, it’s getting recycled, and we’re shipping it out all of the time.”
Due to COVID concerns, CRI now stores recyclables for 72 hours before processing to reduce risk of employee exposure to COVID-19 during the sorting process.
“Even though we do require people to do a little bit of sorting for us, we actually have to sort the materials even further,” explained Geoff Crumbaugh, an Administrative Manager at CRI.
“In a typical day, everybody clocks in, and the first thing everybody does is a ‘sort party’ in the morning, and we do that for about an hour and a half,” said Crumbaugh.
MAKING A DIFFERENCE LOCALLY
Both CRI and county waste programs play a big role in recycling materials locally.
According to Richardson, the county programs at the composting facility, hazardous waste facility and landfill recycle more than 25 million pounds of material each year.
In addition, several Grand Junction businesses recycle not only traditional recyclables, but also appliances, electronics, batteries and windows.
“We are fortunate to live in a place where the items you recycle are being recycled,” Richardson said. “I would encourage residents to get to know the local recycling community.”
According to a recent Associated Press story, Colorado has been lagging on recycling targets statewide, with a recycling rate about 15.9% in 2019. The state’s goal is 28% and the national average is 35%. Snyder said Grand Junction is actually above the state average, with 23% of city residents recycling at the curb.
“That’s not to say that there aren’t cities that are doing much better than we are, at 50% or 35%. We’d certainly like to see more people recycle,” Snyder said.
“Something I’d like to stress, especially around the holidays, is that recycling is the last of the three Rs and we need to remember to reduce and reuse, repurpose some of the items we could be using … That makes a huge difference when it comes to how wasteful we are as a consumer society, especially during a holiday like Christmas where we’re giving gifts to each other.”
Richardson agreed: “When we recycle often and recycle right, we do make a difference.”
As a reminder to residents, strands of Christmas lights should not be thrown in the trash; they should instead be brought to the hazardous waste facility for proper disposal. Also, neither glossy metallic wrapping paper nor pie tins are recyclable at CRI, and bows and ribbons should be removed from packages prior to recycling.
For further questions about recycling, Snyder encourages residents to call CRI or visit gjcri.com.
“Since our inception, we have specialized in nothing but recycling, so we do want to make sure that people understand what is recyclable … And we have the best recyclers here in Grand Junction, I really can’t stress that enough,” she said. “They’re very well informed, they call us, and ask us these things.”
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Maya Hilty is a reporter intern with The Daily Sentinel. She’s a Palisade High School graduate attending Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.
