Recycling Scraps
July 30, 2010

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NMED's Scrap Tire Grant Cycle is Open

NMED is opening another scrap tire grant cycle for fiscal year 2011.  Complete and accurate applications must be received by NMED no later than 5:00 PM, August 6, 2010.  The department is looking for grant application projects / purchases that can be completed within six to nine months of issuance of a state purchase order.   Approximately $166,000 is available for the grants.  A copy of the application form and instructions are attached.

Municipality, counties, Indian nations, pueblos and tribes, land grant communities, cooperative associations and solid waste authorities are eligible for the funds.  Projects must be completed by June 15, 2011.  Grants can be used to abate illegal tire dumps and stockpiles, for purchase of tire derived products (e.g., ground rubber for playgrounds), for construction of tire bale projects, transportation, and other tire recycling projects.

For more information, contact Toni Duggan at the New Mexico Environment Department at 505-827-0559 or toni.duggan@state.nm.us

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Law Seeks to Boost Federal Procurement of Recycled Goods

On July 21, U.S. Sens. Tom Carper, D-Del., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, introduced legislation to encourage the use of recycled goods within the federal government. The bill, titled “Federal Procurement of Recycled Materials to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” as outlined in a press release from Sen. Carper’s office, defines reasonable cost for the federal procurement of recycled materials.

Currently, federal agencies are encouraged to opt for reasonably priced recycled products, but ambiguity surrounding what constitutes a reasonable price means recycled goods are often ignored. As the federal government is the largest U.S. purchaser of goods, it is hoped that its embrace of recycled products will spur recycling markets.

The legislation defines reasonable cost for the federal procurement of recycled materials as no more than 110 percent of the price of the highest-ranked competing bid for goods with at least 25 percent recycled content, thus clarifying that a 10 percent premium for goods with at least 25 percent recycled content is reasonable.

“This bill not only encourages our Federal agencies to use recycled goods, it also sends a market signal that will help grow recycling within our larger economy,” said Sen. Carper, who co-chairs the Senate Recycling Caucus with Sen. Snowe. “Just as was the case in the 1990s when the Federal government began purchasing recycled paper, the increased demand for the product spurred competition and drove down prices, making it more affordable for all consumers to purchase recycled paper. Similarly, this bill will help create an enhanced market demand for recycled goods throughout our economy, and at the same time will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save us energy, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the United States.”

Sen. Tom Carper was recently recognized by the National Recycling Coalition and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries at the Recycling Works Gala in Washington DC for his continued support for the recycling industry.

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NMRC and NM Organics Recycling Organization Adopt Organics Position Statement and Create Organics Management Guide

NMORO/NMRC Position on Organics Management
The two entities have created a position statement advising communities on best practices of organics management.

The New Mexico Organics Recycling Organization encourages local communities to develop cost-effective programs to divert organic material (including yard, food, manure, mortality, agricultural and biosolids waste) from landfills.  Removing organics from the waste stream has the following benefits: conserves landfill space, enables utilization of a valuable resource, and avoids greenhouse gas (methane) creation.  These programs should consider the following components:

1. Develop Local Ordinances to Encourage a Soft Ban Of and Provide Price Incentives to Reduce and Divert Organics From Landfills. A soft ban requests customers to voluntarily comply with a material ban. The ban can be written into local ordinance or simply added to signage and does not have penalties or enforcement. Price incentives would provide a reduced tip fee for sorted organic material.

View Complete Position Statement More»

Starting an Organics Diversion Program
NMORO & NMRC created a simple guide to assist communities in launching or expanding their organics management program. Included in the guide is a worksheet to guide you through the steps of considering upfront costs, equipment needs, ongoing costs and then benefits derived from diverting organics. Case Studies of programs such as Las Cruces, Soilutions, Estancia Valley Solid Waste Authority, Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Soils Amendment Facilty, City of Albuquerque and Wood U Recycle! are included.

New Mexico Organics Recycling Guide More»

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Grassroots Recycling Efforts in Action

Angel Fire recycling champion Tara Chisum attended the Grassroots & Outreach session at the June NM Recycling Conference and learned how speaker Suzanne Michaels from Las Cruces secured a weekly column with the Daily Sun-News to write about recycling. Tara took this to heart and is now writing a weekly column for the Sangre de Cristo Chronicle entitled "Trash Talk." Below is her first edition!

Trash Talk
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Do you know where your trash ends up? It’s all too easy to fill up the waste basket and never think about that waste again.  We don’t want to be reminded of our ugly waste while enjoying this pristine valley.  So it’s hauled away … out of sight, out of mind. Well, it ends up 90 miles away in a landfill near a small town called Wagon Mound.  Wagon Mound is named after a famous butte.  Wagon Mound Butte was the last great landmark on the westward journey across the plains of NE New Mexico.  It was a guidepost seen by all travelers on the High Plains section of the Santa Fe Trail and is now a National Historic Landmark.
Landfills are Costly - A landfill permit in New Mexico can cost $2 million, construction costs run in the tens of millions and operational costs are increasing every year.  In light of these costs, it is surprising to note that NM still ranks at the bottom of the list for disposal costs, averaging 1/8 of the costs other states are faced with.  Angel Fire spends $85 per ton of waste that is sent to the Wagon Mound landfill and it is inevitable that these costs will increase.

So, what can you and I do about it? Recycle!  Divert your waste from the landfill.  Not only will it save $84/ton in landfill expense, Angel Fire Village gets paid for selling recyclables.  This money is used to keep our Collection Center running and to implement new recycling programs (such as glass recycling – coming soon).  Not only will recycling preserve the beauty and history of Wagon Mound it will ensure your solid waste bills remain low.

Angel Fire Collection Center (377-6967) currently recycles aluminum cans, plastic bottles (#1 & 2), corrugated cardboard, copper, batteries, motor & cooking oil, antifreeze, CFL light bulbs and steel. 

If you need assistance setting up a recycling program in your home, business or school contact the Angel Fire Sustainably Committee. 

Trash Talk is a weekly column brought to you by your Angel Fire Sustainably Committee.

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Donated Alcoa Recycling Bins Serve Dual Purpose

Taos Pueblo wins for most innovative use of donated Alcoa Recycling bins - aside from providing recycling bins at the Pueblo's Health and Community Services Offices and Transfer Station the bins became a useful snake capture and transport system when Robert Gomez from Taos Pueblo Environment Office found a bull snake that decided to crawl into a bin to get cool one summer day. Another aspect of rural recycling to be considered!

In January of 2010 Alcoa’s generously donation 2,353 recycling binsto the New Mexico Recycling Coalition, enabling NMRC to provide these bins to 14 of its members.  The 14 bin recipients include Albuquerque Academy, Cottonwood Valley Charter School, Keep Las Vegas Beautiful, Keep New Mexico Beautiful, Keep Rio Rancho Beautiful, Pueblo of Tesuque, Santa Ana Pueblo, Santa Fe County, Socorro County Chamber of Commerce, South Central Solid Waste Authority, South West Solid Waste Authority, Taos Pueblo, Village of Angel Fire and Village of Cimarron.

Recipients recently reported on the success of their bin program. A few of these highlights are noted below.

CJ Law from Southwest Solid Waste Authority in Silver City noted that, "The 168 bins that we got have already been distributed as a part of our new single stream Recycling process. We have seen an increase in volume of over 20% since instituting the program. The Alcoa bins are being used in our curbside program that has new customers being added everyday. We expect that our volume will exceed 900 tons this year from about 1000 customers. The Alcoa bins were instrumental in the success of single stream recycling during a time of scarce financial resources."

Mark Mellott from Albuquerque Academy reported that, "We've used the Alcoa recycling bins mostly for collecting organic waste materials, which we are converting into compost and vermicompost. Organic waste includes pre-consumer food prep waste from one campus dining hall, coffee grounds from select coffee makers on campus, lunch waste from the Grounds Department, and weeds and herbaceous plant debris from campus gardening activities. We are planning to expand the school's food waste collection program (that is, collect ALL food waste from both dining halls on campus), and we will use the Alcoa bins to support this activity."

Mia Barela from Santa Fe County stated that, "Many Santa Fe County residents took advantage of the Alcoa recycle bins, which were offered to residents for household recycling. There was an overwhelming response from the Rancho Viejo and Eldorado communities.  Recycle numbers have gone up and we hope to see this increase continue."

Terry Tadano from Socorro County Chamber of Commerce received 193 bins that have been offered and distributed to government offices, grade school, NM Technical University and  to the nearby Village of Magdalena and La Joya. Many recipients have started a recycle program at their schools or  community special events. 

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NMRC Board Meeting Dates

The NMRC board meets 5 times a year and members are always welcome to attend the meetings. We welcome your input and are always looking for new board members for our September election. We have also started offering a call-in option to board meetings. If you wish to attend any of the meetings, please RSVP ahead of time to english@recyclenewmexico.com.

September 14, 9 AM - 1 PM, Moriarty

November 4-5, Retreat at Sevilleta Research Station, 1 PM to 1 PM

All these meetings are posted online at www.recyclenewmexico.com/calendar.htm

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More Creative Uses for Recycled Tires

Tire Buddha - Thanks to Board Member Ramon Acevedo-Cruz from Holloman Airforce Base for sending the amazing tire art images - we don't know where they're from or who the artists are (this informoration got lost in the email forwarding chain somewhere), but it's great to see innovative recycling like this. We'll post more again in next month's Scraps.

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Governor Bill Richardson Announces NM Leads Rocky Mountain States in Growth of Green Energy Jobs

SANTA FE - Governor Bill Richardson announced on July 1 that a new report released by Headwaters Economics shows that New Mexico has emerged as a clean energy leader, increasing its percentage of green jobs faster than other Rocky Mountain States.
 
"New Mexico is proud to be a national leader in clean and renewable energy development," said Governor Richardson. "These efforts reward New Mexicans by expanding and diversifying our energy resources, which is good for the environment, and help create green jobs during this challenging economic time."

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New Packaging Association on Horizon

From Resource Recycling

A powerful, new packaging association, focusing on sustainability, environmental and recycling issues, will be launched in the coming months. Labeled AMERIPEN — American Organization for Packaging and the Environment — the new alliance includes many major firms, such as The Coca-Cola Co., ConAgra Foods, DuPont and the Kellogg Co. The organization will be "science-based" and "open to any company with an economic interest in packaging and packaged products."

Specifically, the organization will present the perspective of all aspects of the packaging industry on topics related to packaging and the environment, at a time when criticism of packaging in the media can reach a fevered pitch.

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EPA Recycling Education Webinars for 2010

You can register for the 2010 EPA Resource Conservation Challenge Web Academy Solid Waste Management and Recycling Education Series on the web at:

http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/rcc/web-academy/index.htm

August 19:  Food Waste/Organics Reduction & Recycling

September 16:  Greening University Campuses

October 21:  Sustainable Materials Management                                    

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Call 2 Recycle Starts Rechargeable Battery Recycling Plan

Call2Recycle wants to help Americans learn more about recycling rechargeable batteries and mobile phones. The Atlanta-based recycling program has launched a new campaign, MyCall2Recycle, to help promote awareness and education about recycling rechargeable batteries.

The recycling program partnered with DeWALT, Lowe´s, RadioShack and Staples to help build the campaign, which involves a social media component and random prize giveaways for people caught in the act of recycling.

Call2Recycle has set a goal of collecting 1 million pounds of batteries by Oct. 1. The organization will host collection drives in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and San Diego, in addition to organizing 30,000 public dropoff locations.

"We have collected more than 55 million pounds of rechargeable batteries since our program launched in 1996, but too many used batteries are still going to landfills," said Carl Smith, president and CEO of Call2Recycle. "Millions of batteries are not recycled, primarily because people don´t know that they can be recycled or where to take them for recycling. Our goal with the MyCall2Recycle campaign is to collect one million pounds of batteries between now and Oct. 1, by making everyone in the U.S. and Canada aware of the free battery recycling locations in their area; and educating businesses on the advantages of becoming a free battery collection spot."

For more information on the campaign, visit http://mycall2recycle.org/ or become a follower or fan at twitter.com/call2recycle or facebook.com/call2recycle.

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Comprehensive Nationwide Recycling Surveys Underway

Resource Recycling will undertake the largest survey of local government recycling managers this summer. The magazine will ask these officials key questions regarding program successes and failures; barriers and opportunities to program growth; what they want from others, such as industry and the federal government; plus, we’ll seek their views on recycling’s future. Resource Recycling will also seek demographic information, including salary levels, so that they can better portray who exactly are these key officials.

While Resource Recycling has nearly 7,000 coordinators in their e-mail database, they want to make sure they have them all. To make sure you’re included, if you are a local government recycling official, or to make sure they have contact details for the recycling coordinator in your community, just send an e-mail to info@resource-recycling.com with the appropriate details. Thank you.

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Additionally, Econservation Institute (EI)(a non-profit research group) and Skumatz Economic Research Associates is conducting a survey about community’s / county’s recycling / reduction programs. Survey participants are automatically entered in a drawing for an IPAD!.  Every couple of years these organizations conduct a nationwide survey on recycling.  It is used to conduct statistical studies that very often end up in Resource Recycling Magazine or Biocycle, APWA, Waste Age etc.

To participate and enter to win an IPAD just click on the link below,
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HJNW3SX or you can also go to www.garbageandrecyclingsurveys.com; and complete the “national survey”. Be sure to include your contact information to become eligible for the prizes (and IPAD and 4 MP3 players). You can also request copies of the survey summary.

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Denver Recycler to Start Taking Beverage Cartons

Now more than 370,000 households and businesses in Denver can drink up and send those paper boxes to the recycling bin as customers of Alpine Waste & Recycling.

The Commerce City-based company's Altogether Recycling Plant began accepting the cartons at the end of June in partnership with the Carton Council, an association of four packaging companies, that has established a market for the milk carton and juice box materials that make them a viable part of the recycling stream.

"Alpine is always continually looking to recycle as many different materials from the waste stream as possible," said Brent Hildebrand, vice president of reyccling for Alpine Waste and Recycling.

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Recycling Commodity Prices

The price for OCC in July is going down $5 due to soft demand and increased generation. Price for ONP 8 went down $5 per Ton. Price for other deinking grades remained the same and price for higher grades went down $10 per Ton in general. Price for plastics has been going down during the last weeks and Aluminum cans took a big hit in June with prices going down as much as $ 0.12 per lb.

Please note that prices differ due to different circumstances like presentation, transportation costs, and amounts of materials being picked-up or delivered.

* Only accepting 100 pounds plus of PET #1

Please note that this is a sample of what is being offered in New Mexico for certain commodities. Purchase prices for OCC and Paper are subject to change based on market fluctuations as reflected in the Southwest Region of the Official Board Markets’ Yellow Sheet. Prices vary according to presentation and quantity. These prices are for partial loads. Full truckloads of any of the materials would be paid at a greater price depending on the pick-up location and destination of the material.

Other resources:

http://www.amm.com/recman/recdata/reccomp.htm for national average commodity prices

http://www.wastenews.com/secondaryfiber/  

http://www.packaging-online.com/

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Recycling Scraps Sponsored By Dex

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Welcome to New Members 2010

Tom Rico, City of Roswell; Richard Kerner, 7UP/RC Bottling; Karen Temple Beamish, Albuquerque Academy; Terry Tadano, Socorro Area Chamber of Commerce; Dennis Gallegos, Waste Management Farmington; Hiram Muse; Michael Alexander, Recycle Away; Dwight McDonough, Estancia Valley Solid Waste Authority; Evelena McGahey; Sylvia Hewett Schneider, City of Carlsbad; Bill Radosevich, NM Waste Servivces; Wilson Laughter, Navajo Nation; Susan Flores, Keep Tularosa Beautiful; Rob Vezina, Toter; Joseph Godfrey, Recycle Taos; Dave Holtman, Western Metals Recycling; Vicki Andrews, Road Runner Waste Service, Inc.; Jerome Salazar, CH2M Hill; Tim Sisneros, F5 Equipment; Theresa Riedinger, Cargotec USA, Inc; Carrie McChesney, Concept Green LLC; Dan Makens, Trails End Woodworks; Andrew Gough; Edward Cook, ServiceMaster Performance; Michelle Murphy, Gap, Inc; Drew Baker, Green Removal Systems; Linda Stevens, Artesia Clean and Beautiful; Bob Carman, Bloomfield Pride Commission; Harriett Taylor, Keep Bosque Farms Beautiful; John Beasley, Keep Carlsbad Beautiful; Bill Bizzell, Keep Clovis Beautiful; Joe Padilla, Keep Dona Ana County Beautiful, Robert Torres, Keep Hatch Beautiful; Craig Fenske, Keep Las Cruces Beautiful; Anita Bradford, Keep Las Vegas Beautiful; Ellen Bizzell, Keep Ruidoso Beautiful; Kathy Tetreault, Keep Ruidoso Downs Beautiful; Gilda Montano, Keep Santa Fe Beautiful; Yvette Fazekas & Cathy Keep Tucumcari Beatiful; Cyndi Sluder, Tierra Bonita of Valencia County

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Regional Round Up

Santa Fe E-Waste Recycling Drop Off Day: August 21, 2010.
Keep Santa Fe Beautiful and The City of Santa Fe will be holding another E-Waste Recycling Drop Off Day on Saturday, August 21, 2010 from 9am to 1pm in the parking lot at Parks at 1142 Siler Rd. You may call 505-955-2215 for further information.

SWANA NM Roadrunner Chapter is hosting the 2010 Road-E-O is scheduled for Saturday August 21 in Santa Fe, New MExico at the SFSWMA Caja del Rio Landfill. Registration fee is $50 for the first event and $25 for the secnod event. The competition is limited to two events. Learn more at http://nmswana.com/

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Grants, Loans and Jobs

State Loans

NMED Constructions Programs Bureau offers low-interest loans for solid waste projects: http://www.nmenv.state.nm.us/cpb/rip.html

Santa Fe Solid Waste Management Authority Job Listing The position of Buckman Road Recycling and Transfer Station site manager is open until filled. Click here to read job description.

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Recycling Tidbits

Rhode Island Requires Manufacturers to collect, recycle thermostats
Thermostat manufacturers are now required by law to manage the collection and the recycling of thermostats containing mercury in Rhode Island.   More»

NRC Opens Board Nominations
The National Recycling Coalition has opened nominations for its board of directors. The nomination packet and application form are available on the NRC website, www.nrc-recycle.org. Nominations are due by August 2, 2010. All 15 Board seats are open. Questions can be directed to NRC Vice President Susan Kattchee, at skattchee@gmail.com.

Firm Publishes Report on Pre-Consumer Recycled Content

UL Environment has published a new report hoping to provide insight on pre-consumer recycled content.   More»

Partnership Promises to Bring Recycling to New Areas
A new partnership will expand recycling opportunities for those who are unable to take their own waste to collection centers.   More»

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Calendar

September 14, 9 AM - 1 PM, Moriarty

November 4-5, Retreat at Sevilleta Research Station, 1 PM to 1 PM

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2010 Recycling and Composting Facility Operator Certification Class Schedule

To register, please go to www.recyclenewmexico.com/cert_classes.htm

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If you have questions about any of the above information or have articles for future Recycling Scraps, please e-mail or call me.

English Bird, Executive Director

New Mexico Recycling Coalition

PO Box 24364, Santa Fe, NM 87502

english@recyclenewmexico.com

(505) 983-4470