New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Lamont plans to correct state’s trash ‘crisis’
HARTFORD — Connecticut could be on track toward managing all of its household trash within its own borders by the end of this decade, a top official in Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration told lawmakers on Monday.
Doing so, however, would require passage of a series of contentious initiatives backed by the Democratic governor to divert massive amounts of consumer packaging, food scraps and other recyclables from the state’s solid waste stream, while also investing in the development of some — as yet undetermined — technology capable of handling whatever trash is left over from those efforts.
“It will take some time,” said Katie Dykes, the commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. “I refer to this as a crisis we are facing primarily because we have to act urgently to put in place the programs and the investments that will regain selfsufficiency precisely because it will take several years for those investments, for those programs to scale and bear fruit.”
Dykes’ comments came as lawmakers heard public comment Monday on Lamont’s legislation to address the state’s ongoing trash issues, which were precipitated by last year’s closure of Hartford’s Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority plant, which at one point burned up to 40 percent of the state’s garbage, turning it into electricity.
One of the key provisions of the governor’s bill would establish mandatory, manufacturer-funded stewardship organizations — commonly referred to as extended producer responsibility, or EPR — to develop easier ways to dispose of packaging products like food-takeout containers, bags, bulky cardboard boxes, newspapers and other other materials that are a growing source of the trash piling up in household waste bins.
In addition, the legislation would set minimum post-consumer recycled material standards for certain products, and set a deadline in 2028 to give all Connecticut residents access to programs that separate the collection of food scraps, which can be broken down through composting.
Connecticut and other states have established EPR programs for traditionally hard-to-dispose of products such as mattresses and smoke detectors, but critics of Lamont’s plan argue that it would amount to “governmentsanctioned, hostile takeover” of the entire recycling industry. Retailers also opposed the bill, saying that the costs of the stewardship programs would simply be passed along to consumers of those products.
“Why would we want to give control of the recycling system, and the waste system, back to the people who are producing the waste in the first place?” said Frank Antonacci, the chief executive officer of Murphy Road Recycling in Berlin.
Supporters of EPR programs, however, pointed to their effectiveness in other places such as Europe and Canada at improving recycling rates and reducing the amount of trash sent to landfills or incinerators. The costs associated with getting rid of pesky plastic products like take-out containers, they said, is already being borne by consumers through the rising costs of trash-hauling, or “tipping,” fees.
“By placing greater responsibility on producers, we can alleviate the strain placed on local municipalities while incentivizing decreased reliance on single use plastics and setting higher standards for use of recycled materials,” said Benjamin Elling, an assistant professor of chemistry at Wesleyan University in Middletown.
The governor’s bill has similarly divided local leaders and even environmental advocates, who argued that it promotes the use of unproven chemical recycling technologies.
On Monday, Dykes continued to defend the legislation’s increase of state fees on the disposal of solid waste to $3 to $5 a ton, with the higher fee attached to trash that is shipped to landfills out of state.
In written testimony submitted to the legislature’s Environment Committee on Monday, however, municipal leaders noted that those fees are being proposed even as the cost for cities and towns to haul trash has risen by more than 40 percent in the last five years, in part due to MIRA’s closure.
The first selectman of Windsor Locks, Paul Harrington, told the committee that the additional state fee “is just another tax” on top of the tipping fees that towns pay to haul their trash to waste-to-energy facilities or out-of-state landfills.
“Municipal budgets are already stretched, and this new tax will be passed on to the residents as a user fee and is simply unaffordable” Harrington said. The money from those fees would be used to fund new programs aimed at diverting recyclables, food scraps and other organic items from the waste stream, which, in addition to a packaging EPR program, she argued would save towns money in the long run. Additionally, Dykes said that the higher fees attached to shipping trash to landfills in states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio reflected the state’s long-established policy preference for burning trash into energy within Connecticut.
Dykes said that the higher fees are more in line with those charged by other states. As part of the state’s efforts to return to self-sufficiency in managing its waste, she said, DEEP would be involved in discussions with municipalities over to develop new facilities that can accept whatever waste cannot be recycled or composted — including, potentially, through a new waste-to-energy plant.
At the tail-end of her testimony on Monday, Dykes told the Senate cochair of the committee, state Sen. Rick Lopes, DNew Britain, that she would abide by his request for a meeting with the state’s trash haulers to discuss some of their ongoing concerns with the bill, including the EPR provision.
“This is a big enough issue to insist that we get together in a room and start talking some of these issues over,” Lopes said.