Sarah Reeves: Let’s bring Vermont’s recycling into the 21st century

This commentary is by Sarah Reeves, government director of the Chittenden Stable Waste District.

Almost 30 years in the past, the Chittenden Stable Waste District constructed Vermont’s first recycling sorting facility, often called a supplies restoration facility, the place “blue-bin” recyclables are sorted. On this identical yr — 1993 — “Jurassic Park” was the massive film hit, a gallon of fuel price $1.68, and Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey dominated the music charts. In different phrases, it was a very long time in the past. 

And identical to folks’s style in music has modified, folks’s recycling wants have developed. The present supplies restoration facility can not sustain with trendy packaging and the recycling wants of Vermonters right now. The ability is inefficient and outdated. Workers are nonetheless hand-sorting some supplies, and the ability is at capability.

To deal with these challenges, Chittenden Stable Waste District is proposing to construct a brand new supplies restoration facility that can be extra environment friendly and efficient, offering reasonably priced, in-state processing for Vermonters’ recycling for years to come back. It will likely be constructed with sufficient capability and suppleness to adapt to modifications in quantity and kinds of recyclables over the subsequent 30 years. The brand new supplies restoration facility can be higher geared up to cope with the vastly diversified packaging codecs that didn’t exist within the twentieth century.

Chittenden Stable Waste District features very like a college or water district, solely we handle stable waste. As a municipally owned district, we serve the general public with out revenue as a driver. 

As a result of we’re a municipality, we want voter approval for long-term borrowing in order that we are able to finance the brand new supplies restoration facility challenge. Chittenden Stable Waste District can be looking for voter approval on this yr’s basic election to borrow not more than $22 million to construct the brand new supplies restoration facility.

In 1993, it’s uncertain that anybody may have imagined the number of packaging that exists in our trendy world. As a result of packaging has modified considerably since then, we’re not in a position to course of the entire kinds of packaging that we want to. The brand new supplies restoration facility, nevertheless, will enable Chittenden Stable Waste District to have the pliability to adapt to future packaging improvements. And the place markets can be found, we can even have the ability to add issues like packaging and containers constructed from black plastic to our checklist of recyclable gadgets.

The brand new supplies restoration facility will enable us to develop for the subsequent 30 years, with 40% extra capability. Vermonters know that recycling has immense advantages for the atmosphere, the local weather, and the economic system. Chittenden Stable Waste District’s new supplies restoration facility will have the ability to course of as much as 70,000 tons (140 million kilos) of recyclables yearly. Recycling these supplies has important greenhouse fuel discount advantages, the equal of eradicating 52,500 passenger automobiles from the street and conserving almost 28 million gallons of fuel yearly. Recycling these supplies saves 634,000 bushes from being reduce down, yearly!  

Recycling reduces the quantity of waste despatched to landfills, conserves pure assets, reduces carbon emissions and creates jobs within the recycling and manufacturing industries. For all of those causes, Vermonters wish to recycle, they usually wish to recycle extra. Constructing a brand new supplies restoration facility will enable our state to recycle extra quantity and kinds of packaging, which implies eradicating extra supplies from the waste stream and sending much less trash to Vermont’s one and solely landfill.

The advantages of a brand new supplies restoration facility transcend defending the atmosphere and lengthen to our economic system. The brand new supplies restoration facility will exchange repetitive, hand-sorting jobs with extra various, expert jobs. It is going to additionally present our hard-working workforce members with a cleaner facility and improved working circumstances.

Whereas the brand new supplies restoration facility is an thrilling prospect, what is probably much more interesting is the truth that this new high-tech facility can be constructed without charge to taxpayers. This bond is not going to enhance taxes and Chittenden Stable Waste District can pay again the mortgage over 25 to 30 years via our operational income. 

Chittenden Stable Waste District does our greatest with what we’ve got, however the present facility has us caught up to now. It’s excessive time we moved into the twenty first century and helped the subsequent two generations of Vermonters recycle extra. The advantages of a brand new supplies restoration facility are clear. It’s a win for Vermonters, our surroundings, and our economic system. I hope you’ll be part of Chittenden Stable Waste District in realizing our imaginative and prescient by supporting the brand new supplies restoration facility and voting for the bond within the November basic election.