
Dear Resident,
For those of you who have watched the 2016 budget work sessions, one of the highlights (or actually lowlights) that was discussed is the state of recycling in Ridgewood today. This is by no means a problem unique to Ridgewood.
Our curbside recycling program began in 1991. We ask our residents to separate their recycling into different streams and to use the beige recycling barrels that we provide to you. We sell our recycling products to processors and in the past have collected enough fees to significantly help in offsetting the expense of running this program. The level of fees is under siege and has actually decreased 18% over the last 3 years from $332,552 to $266,232; a further decline is anticipated in 2016.
This is not a Ridgewood-specific challenge. Based on global issues, predominantly the China crackdown dubbed Green Fence, recycling processors are finding it increasingly difficult to supply China, a major global recycling processing center, with recycling products. China is rejecting containers of waste it deems are contaminated or are not sorted appropriately.
Which brings us back to our challenge in Ridgewood……
Our recycling processor has, with little notice, tightened their standards for the product that we provide to them. We therefore must provide the recycling processor with the most pristine product that we can – this means that it is so very important that we improve the quality of our recyclables.
One particular problem is the inclusion of plastic bags with your recycling – this is not allowed. When mixed in with other recycling, plastic bags get caught in the machinery at the recycling plant at times causing the facility to shut down their sorting equipment to manually remove entangled bags. When the processor has to manually separate this material from our stream, the Village loses revenue and pays for the disposal of the material as garbage. Not intermixing plastic bags with your recycling has always been a rule since the inception of our recycling program but has not been strictly enforced because the market was accepting the product without question. Plastic bags must be placed in your trash or recycled at Stop & Shop, Whole Foods Market and Acme.
Besides not intermixing plastic bags with your recycling, you can help us even more by following good recycling practice which you can find either in the 2016 Green Guide that was mailed to your home earlier this year or on our Recycling Website or by calling us at 201-670-3373.
I have touched on the Ridgewood economic challenges above……but a crucial point is that recycling is good for our world…..this should be reason enough for us to try to do better as a community. We have also challenged our recycling team to come up with new and different ways to enhance our program. As usual, we would love to hear your ideas on this – I know that we have many residents who are passionate about this issue.
We look forward to working with you on this effort.
Best,
Roberta Sonenfeld
Village Manager
201-670-5500, ext. 203
And we need money for the garage.
Did you really write this garbage?
“The level of fees is under siege and has actually decreased 18% over the last 3 years from $332,552 to $266,232; a further decline is anticipated in 2016.”
The residents are the ones under siege here in Ridgewood; not fees. But I get your logic since you intend to raise my parking fees by 400% this summer to support the county garage.
Let’s start by removing the Garbage from Village Hall…
Conveniently it meets there every other Wednesday night and sometimes by appointment if you are a special interest or campaign contributor.
Or you can just remember to vote in this coming election so you don’t have to get the stink of these skunks on you.
IT,S SPANO,S FAULT. take it out of his pay.
If you happen to watch the recycle refuse being collected it is not uncommon to watch it be all be loaded into the same exact collection gate on the truck. We spend time separating the papers into different bins only to watch them get dumped into the same place.
I did ask the driver one time about this and he said they had reached the limit and it did not matter too much on paper differences.
At the end of the day seems like a simple jobs program with unmeasured results
They will begin issuing summonses for violations of the new Recycling policy just like they did with the leaves. A new way to make money for the parking garage. Hold onto your wallets!
I’m going to put my leaves in with my recyclables so I don’t get fined another $85.
It’s another simple edict: do as we say or the fines will continue. Years back when the Village was going to stop hauling the BoE garbage, they offered to do it for a price. (Around $125k/yr, I think) The BoE put out a bid for quotes and it resulted in a hauler taking it for about half the price. I am not attacking our hard-working village employees but for Roberta to say ‘give us only pristine garbage’ is absurd.
What is the big deal about asking to keep plastic bags out of recycling? Sounds like a reasonable request.
gotta agree with paul smith, and those who wonder if the village is using the free market to get the best prices for recycling and garbage hauling.
mr spano is screwing up this hole town. everything he is involved with is a mess, what a waste. what a joke, what a screw up. frank moritz saved his ass in the past, but now he is gone, wait for the spring vote , time to clean house.