If every Connecticut resident and business recycled their soda and beer cans — instead of throwing them away or returning them for a nickel deposit — Tom DeVivo would be a rich man.
DeVivo’s recycling-hauler company Willimantic Waste gets $1,550 for every ton of aluminum cans it collects from businesses and single-stream recycling bins. Unfortunately for DeVivo and other Connecticut haulers most people don’t recycle their cans. In fact, cans account for less than 0.25 percent of all the tonnage Willimantic Waste collects.
On the flip side, recycled glass has almost no value to DeVivo because of the way haulers receive it via single-stream — dirty, broken, and mixed with other goods — making that contaminated commodity more costly to get rid of.
“Connecticut should put a deposit on every piece of glass and take the deposit off plastics and aluminum cans,” DeVivo said. “That would help out in increasing the value of the overall recycling stream.”
As Connecticut seeks to increase its recycling rate from 25 percent to 60 percent by 2024, there are major disagreements about how best to achieve that goal and a lot at stake for trash haulers like Willimantic Waste, and its competitors All Waste of Hartford and USA Hauling & Recycling of East Windsor. As operators of the single-stream system, they handle the vast majority of the state’s residential recycled goods.
In order to boost the quality of recycled goods, the state is considering taking more materials out of the single-stream system by expanding the types of aluminum, plastics, and glass covered under the nickel deposit law.
That creates a financial hit to recyclable haulers, which have already experienced pressures from declining recycled goods prices that have been cut in half from $116 per ton in 2011 to $55 per ton this year.
“The haulers want all the glass out, and they want all the plastics in because that is where the value is,” said Chris Nelson, supervising environmental analyst for the Department of Energy & Environmental Protection, which is leading the recycling initiative.
While glass recycled via single-stream has negative value, glass bottles returned via the nickel deposit law tend to be cleaner and unbroken. A company called Reflective Recycling in South Windsor makes solid revenues packaging up those deposit bottles and sending them to a processor in Massachusetts, said Nelson.
Because of the greater success in recycling deposited bottles, advocacy group ConnPIRG this year lobbied for the legislature to expand the nickel deposit law to all single-serving beverages, regardless of the container they are sold in, something recyclable haulers oppose.
“It is, by far, the most effective recycling method that we have,” said Abe Scarr, ConnPIRG director. “Obviously, single-stream has been very successful to a certain point, but there are drawbacks to single-stream, particularly with glass because it tends to get contaminated.”
Since the third quarter of 2010, the average redemption rate for bottles covered under the nickel deposit has been 55.5 percent, according to the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services, much higher than the current 25 percent recycling rate.
If by expanding the bottle deposit law, more single-serving beverages are taken out of the single-stream system, they will be replaced by other recyclables that still have value, Scarr said, and the haulers won’t suffer.
DeVivo disagrees. While other goods in the single-stream system have value, the bottle deposit definitely hurts haulers and expanding it would make things worse. Water and soda bottles and aluminum cans are two of the three highest valued commodities of the 14 items in the single-stream system, he said, fetching $360 per ton and $1,550 per ton respectively.
The overall value of each recycled ton has to be enough to cover the costs of equipment, fuel, labor, and other overhead, and removing more of the most valuable goods shrinks margins, DeVivo said.
Milk jugs have significant value at $950 per ton, but haulers also have to deal with issues like glass, soiled newspaper and mixed paper, and trash that get into the single-stream buckets, which haulers must pay to get taken to waste disposal facilities.
“In the industry, we are used to fluctuating prices of commodities,” DeVivo said. “It is very hard with single stream, but I still think it is the way to go.”
Going back to the old system where residents separated all their recyclables won’t work either, DeVivo said, because the cost of labor and equipment in keeping all those goods separated was too high.
That still leaves the broken, dirty glass problem, which the state must help fix, DeVivo said. The haulers can sell the glass for $10-$40 per ton depending on the condition and the color, but it costs more than that to collect, sort, and ship out again.
The expansion of the nickel deposit law to cover glass containers like mayonnaise jars and spaghetti sauce containers is very unlikely to happen, said Nelson. ConnPIRG’s proposal — putting a nickel deposit on all single-serving beverages — is more likely to gain traction.
Through the 60 percent recycling initiative, DEEP is launching its Recycle CT marketing campaign, which will seek to educate the state’s businesses and residents on proper techniques. If that effort results in residents putting cleaner, unbroken glass containers into the single-stream system, then the haulers could get more value.
“You have to change some behavior as well,” DeVivo said.
