Rural Recycling - The Hub and Spoke Project

NMRC can provide technical assistance to your community to start or expand recycling. We have several programs available to support your recycling program:

1) At any time, we can provide technical assistance to start or improve your recycling program and develop outreach and education materials.

2) We encourage rural communities to work regionally with neighboring communities, counties, solid waste authorities, tribes, council of governments, university or large facilities, citizen activists and civic groups in order to bring efficiencies and enthusiasm to your recycling program. We can help you bring together interested parties. Starting a citizens recycling group or working with an existing civic group has produced extraordinary results for communities to build awareness and participation in their programs.

3) In the next year, under a Department of Energy (DOE) American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant, NMRC will solicit for applications to provide equipment and infrastructure to build out three recycling center hubs and improve existing recycling center hubs. A follow-up grant announcement will then be targeted to provide smaller, spoke communities with recycling collection trailer or roll-offs to feed into regional hubs.

4) A recycled material cooperative entity will be launched in early 2011 by NMRC that will enable smaller communities to sell their materials cooperatively gaining steadier market pricing, decreasing storage time of material and expanding the types of material they are able to market. If you are interested in becoming a member of the cooperative, let us know!

5) Under the DOE grant, we will also launch a statewide educational and support campaign for communities to evaluate the benefits of Pay-As-You-Throw as a solid waste rate structure in order to encourage more diversion. NMRC will be able to provide interested communities with technical expertise, rate structuring advice, and support city management in the decision-making process.

6) Each January, the NM Environment Department solicits for recycling and illegal dump grant applications to support recycling programs. For more information on this program, contact Tim Gray at tim.gray@state.nm.us or 505-827-0129.

What is Hub & Spoke Recycling?

Successful recycling programs depend on efficient collection and basic processing of materials.  This is achieved through the hub and spoke model, which works by creating regional recycling processing centers within larger communities that serve as “hubs” and encourages smaller communities or “spokes” to deliver their recyclables to these hubs.  Recycling hubs will invest in or solicit grants for capital equipment and infrastructure needed to create and store high density bales of materials that remanufacturing markets require.  Spoke communities will invest in or solicit grants for recycling collection trailers or containers.  These mobile drop-off stations are easily transported to nearby recycling hubs.  The hub and spoke system has been targeted as it provides the most efficient means of gathering and processing recyclables, from both a capital and operational cost perspective.   Hub and spoke systems greatly reduce transportation requirements and increase overall efficiency of program operations.

While most urban areas of the state are well served by municipally or privately-operated processing facilities, the rural nature of the state leaves the majority of NM with little or no access to these services. This shortcoming has been clearly identified by NMRC’s Mapping Project, conducted under a U.S.D.A. Rural Utilities grant, where all solid waste facilities have been documented and mapped. This mapping effort illuminates under-served areas and demonstrates the “holes” in NM’s recycling processing capacity and the areas underserved with processing capacity.  Figure 1 clearly identifies the need for expanded hub and spoke recycling within NM, as there are numerous locations within the state that do not have recycling processing facilities or the existing facility is at capacity and cannot accept more materials.

Figure 1. Status of recycling “hubs” in NM.

The hub and spoke model provides a simple and efficient solution to recycling collection and processing in rural communities. The hub and spoke approach has been proven in several regions of North America.  The best documented case comes from the Canadian Province of Ontario, where provincial government mandated the approach to resolve the inefficiencies created when each community attempted to provide their own independent processing capacity. In rural areas of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming a cooperative effort was formed on this model and has provided a stable recycling system for a broad rural area in these states. The State of Massachusetts took the hub and spoke principle a step further by building a central hub itself and contracting its operations to a private vendor. The Springfield Municipal Recycling Facility serves a dozen or more communities with processing services and has proven to be the cornerstone of recycling efforts in Massachusetts.

Rural Recycling Resources

*Recycling Brochure & Logo Template
NMRC has developed a template that if you fill out we can customize it for your community. Also, available is a custom logo. Contact Sarah Pierpont for either of these services (see below).

Brochure Template click here

Custom Logo

Example of an Excellent Brochure: Santa Ana Pueblo click here

*NM Recycling Conference 2010: Hub & Spoke, Rolling Towards 33%

The 2010 conference container many presentations directed at small and rural communities. Presentations have been posted online for reference.

NM Recycling Conference 2010 Conference Presentations click here

*Recycling Action Plan Template
Based on NMED's Conmunity Recycling Action Plan, a template is provided to help guide communities to strategically document and plan long-term for their recycling and diversion program.

Community Recycling Action Plan Template click here

Reduce, Reuse Resources
Reducing resource consumption at the front end and reusing is a model that can be embraced in rural communities. Include ideas on how to reduce and reuse in all outreach materials. Consider adding a Reuse "Swap Shop" at the transfer or drop-off stations (see photo below of Santa Ana Pueblo's Swap Shop where they have a simple shed with some shelving set aside for reuse and a container that collects materials for Big Brothers, Big Sisters). A Case Study outlines the challenges to consider with a reuse area and also discusses how to host a Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) exchange area.

Santa Ana ReUse & HWW Exchange Area click here

EPA's Reduce, Reuse Web Resources for Outreach click here

*Rural Recycling Resource Kit
Developed under program work for our USDA Rural Utilites grant, the Rural Recycling Resource Kit was created in June 2009. Target audiences if for anyone managing or planning for recycling in their rural community, or who wants to learn more about what it takes equipment and planning-wise to build a program.

Please visit the following link to view the document.  We ask that you either use this document electronically or if printing, print it double sided.  Visit Rural Recycling Resource Kit to view the entire 120-page document or you may select any of the following specific sections to download in smaller sizes:

NM Solid Waste: Today and In the Future

Waste and the Law

Recycling Step by Step

Commodity Fact Sheets

       Cardboard (OCC)

       Newspaper (ONP)

       Aluminum Cans (UBC)

       Plastics

       Glass

       Motor Oil

       Batteries

       Green Waste

       Scrap Metal

       Freon

       Tires

       E-Scrap

Outreach and Promotion

Case Studies

Buy Recycled

Reporting

Funding Opportunities

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Want Assistance for Your Community?
Contact Sarah Pierpont, NMRC Deputy Directory, at sarah@recyclenewmexico.com or call 505-603-0558.