It's
occurred to me recently that, to the outside world, the topics we
engage with on the County Board might seem pretty humdrum and
trivial. The fact that the change in the hiring approval process,
noted below, was such a big deal, probably comes as a surprise.
Another issue that many of you might not think about all that much,
an issue we discuss every month at SWEC, is recycling.
The
County is statutorily responsible for recycling – as far as I know,
another unfunded mandate – but we've been doing it a long time and
we can get pretty enthused, in our monthly discussions, about the
variety of items that can be recycled and how we go about doing that.
Here are just some examples:
MATTRESSES:
As you can imagine, a discarded mattress (usually accompanied by its
boxspring) can take up a lot of room in a landfill. Consider that
Otsego County has two colleges, two hospitals, and a very robust
tourist industry, we generate a lot of mattresses that need to be
disposed of (and boxsprings too, of course).
Triad
is a recycling and energy company in the western part of the state,
and it recycles mattresses. What this means is that they employ
people to manually deconstruct each mattress and boxspring, and
separate all the component parts for re-use. Steel, polyurethane
foam, wood and fabrics are processed for reuse. They've got a
trailer at the Southern Transfer Station in Oneonta; we fill it up,
and they take it away. We charge $25/mattress, and pretty much break
even; no mattress goes to a landfill. Learn more at their
website.
AG
PLASTIC: You've seen those white plastic-wrapped haystacks, ranked
by the dozens, on the edges of fields, and the long bays of
plastic-covered silage in horizontal silos adjacent to larger working
farms in our County. Tons and tons of that plastic is used each
year, and it's all trash when the feed is unwrapped and fed to the
cows. In conjunction with Jordan Clements and the Otsego
County Soil & Water District, we hold two ag plastic
recycling days a year. Farmers bring us the plastic, we use a
dedicated baler designed for just that, load the bales on a
tractor-trailer, and ship it out. The bales take a long, circuitous
route halfway around the world, and return to us as plastic grocery
bags (more of that below). For about 40,000 pounds of trucked-in
bales, we get about enough money to pay for the trucking.
PLASTIC
GROCERY BAGS: If you're keeping up with this kind of thing, you'll
know that there are initiatives all over the country to get a grip on
the plastic grocery bag problem. They're ubiquitous, getting into every
conceivable wastestream and littering our landscape more and more
every year (and threatening many kinds of wildlife in the bargain).
Some municipalities have banned them outright; others have imposed a
five-cent fee for each one you use. New York City is working on a
fee; some Legislators in Albany are looking at a plan to provide a
three-cent sales tax credit for each reusable bag a customer brings
in and fills with groceries.
There
is, however, a way for each of us to address this right now. State
law requires that larger stores that use plastic grocery bags provide
a place for customers to return them for recycling. As it turns out,
these bag recycling bins accept most 'thin film' products, including
bread bags, those bags you use for your veggies in the produce
department, drycleaning bags, ziploc bags, plastic cereal box liners,
Tyvek, bubble wrap (you need to pop the bubbles – what a great
excuse to have fun!) and most other thin-film plastic product wrap.
There are bins in Oneonta in Hannaford, Price Chopper, Walmart, Home
Depot, and Lowe's, for a start. So – something we can all do about
all this plastic.
OCCA's
EARTH FESTIVAL: April 22, at Milford Central School. I have to
admit that the first time I went, when I first joined the Board, it
was because I kind of thought I should. What a great day it turned
out to be! I spent hours learning and talking and listening and
looking at fascinating presentations. I also got rid of all the
styrofoam I had been hoarding in the hope of finding someplace to
recycle it.
So
don't miss it. I hope to see you there, right after I drop off all
the styrofoam (actually, expanded polystyrene) I've been collecting
since the last one. Learn
a whole lot more.