Recycling Pays

In March of 2008, SOCRRA performed a unique study of its member’s trash. As you may or may not know, SOCRRA (the Southeastern Oakland County Resource Recovery Authority) is the governmental body that handles all of your solid waste collection and disposal services---including weekly curbside refuse collection and disposal; weekly recyclables collection and processing at its Materials Recovery Facility; weekly yard waste collection and composting (returning the finished garden humus back to your community); management of the recyclables drop-off center, and household hazardous waste and used electronic equipment recycling.

Anyway, back to the trash sort. A representative truck load from each community was brought into our Troy Transfer Station and the garbage dumped on the facility’s floor. The garbage was then pushed onto an in-ground conveyor and fed into a large rotating drum, called a “trommel screen”. This large rotating drum contains many sharp knives inside to tear the bags open and allow small debris to fall through the holes in the screen. The trash that then exits the screen should all be nasty garbage, right? Well, unfortunately, that’s not at all what we found. Taking a close look, there’s still lots of paper, especially newspapers, lots of cardboard, occasional metal objects, and bottles and cans made of glass, plastic and metal.

When the sorters stopped the line during testing and carefully picked through the trash, some dismal results were obtained:

*Roughly 25-35% of the trash from any and all member communities consist of recyclable material!

*The majority, about 25% of the recyclables, are papers.

*About 5% of the salvageable material are bottles and cans.

*Another 1% consists of larger metal objects such as hot water tanks and small air conditioners.

In a year, this testing would mean that about 37,000 tons (74 million pounds!) of recyclable material are thrown away. That’s a shame. That’s also a huge waste of taxpayer dollars. Each ton of recyclable material earns the member community $55 and saves from spending $25 on landfilling. Therefore, the 37,000 tons of recyclables in the trash is costing SOCRRA communities almost $3 million per year! Something needs to be done about this.

Are you interested in some neat containers for the home that could tidy up your recycling efforts?

There are many ways to make collecting and sorting recyclables easier. Placing recycling bins near trash cans will remind you not to throw away recyclable materials. Hanging baskets or stackable containers are a good way to store and sort recyclables.

If you don’t want to store recyclables, feel free to use SOCRRA's Drop-Off Center at 995 Coolidge in Troy across from Meijer. The Drop-Off Center accepts all items that can be placed in your bin, plus some items that cannot be placed in your bin. These items include hardcover books, CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes, cassette tapes, plastic bags and large batteries.

Recycling not only benefits our environment by reusing resources and saving energy, but recycling also benefits you and your community by providing a rebate for every ton of recyclables. Every piece of paper or bottle or can set in your recycling bin is cash for your community. Recycling rebates provided by SOCRRA keep overall trash and recycling collection costs down and that means more dollars in your wallet rather than in taxes.

You can also obtain SOCRRA's current guidelines on what can and cannot be placed in your bin. It is important to stay up to date on current guidelines because SOCRRA continues to add new materials for recycling.

Did you know that recycling just one ton of paper saves enough energy to run an average 3 bedroom home for an entire year? Each year, SOCRRA saves enough energy to power all the homes in Beverly Hills for one year.

For information on these topics and much more, in hopes that you’ll take recycling seriously, if you don’t already, please visit our website: www.socrra.org. From answers to Frequently Asked Questions, virtual tours of our facilities, explanations on where your recyclables ultimately go and what they’re recycled into, and much, much more………visit our website www.socrra.org.