JOHNSTON
— It’s official: Rhode Island glass is getting reused. On Wednesday, the Rhode
Island Resource Recovery Corporation (RIRRC) board of commissioners unanimously
approved a contract to ship glass to a processor in Franklin, Mass.
Unlike
other recyclable materials such as paper and plastic, RIRRC won’t be paid for
collecting and shipping this commodity. Instead, the quasi-state agency will
pay $205,000 annually to have it hauled to glass processor Strategic Materials
Inc. (SMI). The funds will be drawn from the profit sharing paid annually to
cities and towns.
Sarah Kite, RIRRC’s director of recycling services, said there are no buyers for recyclable glass. “We would love to get paid for the glass," she said. "There’s just no market right now.”
RIRRC
stopped shipping glass to recyclers and processors in 2002 because of the
shipping expense. Instead, the glass was crushed and poured on top of the
landfill to tamp down loose debris.
Last
year, the state Department of Environmental Management (DEM) prohibited glass
from the daily cover as part of an effort to quell an odor problem. Beginning
last July, glass was simply buried with other trash.
In
late January, RIRRC began shipping glass to SMI on a trial basis.
Some shipments, however, were rejected due to an excess of paper, notably shredded paper. Rhode Island residents are permitted to put shredded paper in their recycling, but this paper must be “double bagged” in clear plastic bags. The bags are collected and emptied by hand at the landfill's recycling center. The new single-stream recycling sorter, however, doesn't effectively parse tiny paper bits. Thus, some of the glass shipments to SMI have been rejected and dumped as trash due to the high paper content.
Some shipments, however, were rejected due to an excess of paper, notably shredded paper. Rhode Island residents are permitted to put shredded paper in their recycling, but this paper must be “double bagged” in clear plastic bags. The bags are collected and emptied by hand at the landfill's recycling center. The new single-stream recycling sorter, however, doesn't effectively parse tiny paper bits. Thus, some of the glass shipments to SMI have been rejected and dumped as trash due to the high paper content.
RIRRC
has improved the sorting in recent weeks and nearly all glass collected has
been heading to SMI. SMI doesn't recycle glass; it is a beneficiation facility
that cleans the class, sorts it by color and grounds it into pellets, or
cullet. Depending on the quality, the cullet is sold to bottle manufactures.
Lower grade glass is used to make cement and asphalt.
The
glass hauling contract was awarded to Francis P. Golden Trucking of Grafton,
Mass. RIRRC has an option of extending the contract for two years. Some 20,000
tons of glass are expected to be shipped each year.
