Is Your Trash Lighting Your Home?

By Kendra Bobowick

What happens to the crumpled up credit card offer that you dropped in the trash? Where does that empty coffee container end up?

The bin under the sink fills with dinner scraps, junk mail, burned-out light bulbs, and empty cereal boxes, you twist it shut and toss it to the curb for pickup. Or, the bag lands in the back of a car headed for what was once referred to as the landfill off Ethan Allan Road.

The facility is now known as a transfer station, Manager John O’Hara explained. Explaining the name he said that once residents or trash haulers unload into his industrial waste containers, “It’s all transferred out.”

Quickly ticking down a mental list including materials that move through the Newtown station he named recyclables, metals, brush, mail, newspapers, cardboard, tires, waste oil, antifreeze, car batteries, construction debris, refrigerators and, of course, trash.

Once trash hits the bin, the refuse clock starts ticking. Trash that arrives at the town transfer station is soon en route to Bridgeport. “We’ve got to move it out in 24 hours,” Mr O’Hara said. “The [Department of Environmental Protection] is very strict about what happens at a transfer station. We’ve got to keep things moving.”

After traveling to Bridgeport the crumpled credit card offer and coffee cup are incinerated — but not wasted. The trash that left your hands after dinner last night is turned to energy.

One of two sites to receive Newtown’s trash includes Wheelabrator Technologies Inc, a waste management company, and Bridgeport Resco, a subsidiary of Wheelabrator. Municipal solid waste (not recycling) is processed at the waste-to-energy facility, said Plant Manager Vin Langone. “We use solid waste as a fuel source — we’re a power plant,” he explained. “Instead of [fossil fuels like coal] we use sustainable fuel.” Energy is sold into the state’s main power grid, he explained, offsetting dependence on imported fuel sources. But how much?

The answer is a hefty number. Mr Langone said they handle roughly 750,000 tons of municipal waste from 31 towns, including Newtown, annually. The number means less imported oil. Offering an example, he said, “One ton of waste is equivalent to one barrel of oil, so we’re saving 750,000 barrels of oil from being used.”

He explained, “In Connecticut almost all of municipal waste is processed through the waste-to-energy process.” Visit www.wheelabratortechnologies.com for more information on the process.

Trash passes through many hands once it is thrown away under an office desk, scraped from a supper plate, or tossed in the trash can and left at the curb. Either a homeowner or a hauler will bring trash to the transfer station, where it is transported to Bridgeport and used as fuel. Also with a hand in the trash and recycling circuit in Connecticut is the Housatonic Resource recovery Authority, a regional, governmental, waste management and recycling authority serving eleven municipalities in western Connecticut and a population of more than 200,000 people. Director Cheryl Reedy was not available for an interview by the time this edition went to press. See the HRRA website at Hrra.org and learn the details for the next household hazardous waste disposal day, May 17, between 9 am and 2 pm, at the Newtown Public Works Garage at 4 Turkey Hill Road.

Energy Task Force Chairman and resident Dan Holmes thinks about the importance of handling trash and recycling properly. Through an e-mail he stressed that both manufacturers and consumers have a responsibility to reduce waste. He is afraid that “recyclable materials end up in landfills or at the incinerator” rather than truly getting recycled.

He hopes for mandatory recycling of products, including electronics, which will reduce contaminants because, as he stated in his mail, “Dangerous compounds such as mercury and lead (among others) are quite dangerous, and can find their way into our streams and soils.” Be careful with what you throw away, he warns. Can that product be recycled? Is there a contaminant in it? Mr Holmes stated that, “Just because there is not a big warning sign on the product,” consumers cannot be sure if the item would do better in a recycle, rather than a trash bin.

Manufacturers need to play a stronger role in protecting the environment. He wrote, “We absolutely need more and stricter enforcement for both the producers and distributors, otherwise the consumer is the one who ends up handling all this trash and in the end the waste stream simply becomes another point of pollution.”