TAMWORTH — With the Tamworth Recycling Project, the town of Tamworth seeks to balance civic and environmental responsibility with economics and convenience when it comes to recycling.
Selectmen’s chairman Willie Farnum told the Sun he and like-minded citizens encourage people to recycle, saying it saves the town money by reducing hauling and tipping fees associated with solid waste, and it also helps slow the rate at which landfills are reaching capacity.
“Throwing stuff into the municipal solid waste dumpster compactor is not the best option,” said Farnum.
And while the market for recyclables isn’t currently lucrative, reducing solid waste in the landfill still saves money. “You can avoid cost more than you can make money,” he said.
Farnum illustrated his point with glass. He said if you throw it in with the mixed solid waste, it will cost $77.50 per ton to dump in a landfill. This cost is called the “tipping fee.” However, if the glass is diverted from the waste stream, it costs only $37-$38 per ton to dispose of it.
There is also a hauling fee for every container of waste that leaves the transfer station for the landfill, and that costs $306.
Glass is crushed and used in highway construction.
“Therefore, it’s not filling up the landfill as fast,” said Farnum. “You’re not paying as much in tipping fees. The long-term landfill situation in the state of New Hampshire is pretty poor. So everything you can divert from that landfill saves you money.”
Municipal solid waste is household trash that cannot be recycled. Tamworth sends its Municipal Solid Waste to Turnkey Landfill in Rochester, which is owned by Waste Management.
Farnum said reducing trash intake by just 10 percent would save $1,500 on hauling fees and $5,000 in tipping fees annually.
“It doesn’t seem like a lot of money,” said Farnum “But you know, you do that over 20 years, and all of a sudden that adds up, right?”
Over 20 years, the savings would total $130,000.
Down in Ossipee, Town Administrator Matt Sawyer Jr. does not support recycling.
“The more the town attempts to recycle, the more it costs the taxpayers with the current materials market,” said Sawyer.
“I would challenge anyone to prove that recycling saves money — you can make the argument that you believe it may save the environment, but the cost to dispose at the landfill is less than the net cost of getting rid of recycled materials, especially single stream,” he said.
“The town of Ossipee did raise its construction/demo fees this year as well as a few other transfer facility fees, including the 2021-22 stickers, which will cost $20 ($10 a year) versus the previous stickers, which cost $10 for two years,” said Sawyer.
The situation with New Hampshire’s landfills is documented in the Nov. 1, 2019, legislative “Report of the Committee to Study Recycling Streams and Solid Waste Management in New Hampshire.”
The bipartisan committee was composed of chair Rep. Karen Ebel (D-New London), Sen. David Watters (D-Dover), Rep. Megan Murray (D-Amherst) and Rep. John O’Connor (R-Derry).
According to the report, there will be a limited shortfall in landfill disposal capacity starting in 2025 and a “significant shortfall” in New Hampshire’s landfill capacity after 2034.
Complicating recycling efforts is the fact that China in late 2017 all but closed off its market to U.S. recyclable waste.
“The recent collapse in prices of certain recycled material commodities, caused by China enacting stricter contamination standards through its National Sword policy, has made the economic viability of recycling less clear to municipalities,” said the committee report.
Tamworth stopped recycling glass in November 2018 but started back up again in May 2019 after a public outcry.
In 2017, the town recycled 75 tons of glass and about 30 tons in 2019. For a time this year, Tamworth stopped recycling because of COVID-19, but it has started up again.
Twenty-seventeen was basically the last relatively normal recycling year. That year, Tamworth disposed of 857.22 tons of household trash and roughly 23 percent was recycled.
One thing that inhibits Tamworth’s ability to recycle is the lack of a baler. This piece of equipment compacts recyclable materials and makes them more efficient to ship, said Farnum. A baler would cost over $100,000. Then you also need a place to house the baler and equipment like a forklift to move the bails and a place to keep the bails clean and dry. If Tamworth had this equipment it could save $20,000 per year, says Farnum who added that the cost of getting said equipment and facilities would be between $800,000 and $1 million.
In the long run, says Farnum, as the disposal and trucking costs increase at some point it will make economic sense for Tamworth to invest in its transfer station.
Farnum suggests that perhaps a number of area towns could pool resources to obtain a bailing facility.
“If you can divide that (bailer costs) by four towns, that’s a lot easier pill to swallow,” said Farnum. “It’s a numbers game. The cost of everything is escalating so fast that it’s, you know, if we don’t do something, so we’re just gonna keep paying.”
Bartlett Selectmen’s chairman Gene Chandler agrees with Farnum at recycling saves money. He said Bartlett and Jackson have benefited from increasing bailing and storage capacities. He said recycling is mandatory.
“The recycling effort definitely saves the Towns money,” said Chandler. “In addition to recycling, we charge for construction debris, tires, appliances, etc. to offset what we have to pay to dispose of these items. Basically anything we recycle saves the taxpayer money as the net cost is less than hauling it to the landfill.”
Freedom Town Administrator Ellen White said that Freedom selectmen over the summer discussed increased disposal fees but they have not made any decisions about that.
According to the committee report, Turnkey Landfill is expected to reach the end of its permitted life expectancy in 2034 but that may be expanded in the future. About 60 percent of its capacity is being taken up by out of state garbage sources. Farnum said the New Hampshire government doesn’t have the right to tell Waste Management to refuse garbage from away.
Once landfills like Turnkey are filled, towns like Tamworth would have to send their trash to far-flung places like West Virginia or the Dakotas, Farnum predicts. He would like to delay that day of reckoning for as long as possible.
Conway, Albany and Eaton are in a different position. They use a landfill owned and operated by the Town of Conway. Conway’s landfill has 16 years on its current “phase” but it is expandable.
“Not only do the Selectmen encourage recycling but it is mandatory,” said Conway Public Works Director Paul DegliAngeli.
The town of Tamworth has a three-year contract with Waste Management for hauling and dumping into the Turnkey. The 2020 Tamworth Transfer Station budget is $262,000. For comparison’s sake, he added Madison’s budget was $265,000 and Effingham’s budget was $174,000.
The transportation cost of Tamworth’s Waste Management contract increases three percent annually every year and that compounds each year. The final year of the contract is 2021 and it’s to be negotiated before October 2021.
“Who knows what the next bill is going to be?” said Farnum.
