Shredding and hazardous waste disposal days also announced

Recycling is continuing to grow in New Jersey, despite problems brought on by “wishful recyclers” and with finding markets for the collected materials, an industry representative reported during Warren County’s annual Recycling Breakfast meeting.

“This industry is not going away. This is a multi-billion-dollar industry,” Patrick McGaheran of Colgate Paper Stock, a New Brunswick company that processes recyclables, told the local recycling coordinators, municipal, school, and county officials attending the meeting at Warren County Technical School’s Knights Café.

Mills will open in the United States that will increase the value of recyclable materials, McGaheran predicted. Although the recycling industry has faced a number of problems, including declining prices for recyclables and overseas markets rejecting materials from the USA, McGaheran told the gathering, “It’s going to get better.”

Colgate provides a trailer at the Warren County Recycling Center, located at the county landfill in White Township, and is the material recovery facility for recyclables brought to the Pollution Control Financing Authority of Warren County.

McGaheran’s topic for the annual meeting was the perspective of a recycling processor on what is acceptable for recycling and what is not.
One problem, he noted, was the “wishful recyclers” will put some types
of metal and plastic items into their recycling bin thinking these things can be processed, but they either cannot be, or cannot be handled in a mixed-stream processing facility.

For instance, plastic grocery bags can be recycled, but must be separated from other items and brought to specific collection locations, he explained. When included in mixed-stream recycling, those bags often get stuck in the conveyers that move and separate recyclable items, McGaheran said, noting, “We have to shut our system down twice a day, for an hour, hour and a half, to clear the wheels.”

To have 7 to 10 percent of waste items mixed into single-stream recycling is workable, McGaheran said, but in some locations as much as 15 percent of the items sent for recycling is waste, and “that’s brutal.”

Warren County Planner David Dech, who also serves as the county’s Recycling Coordinator, said residents and businesses should check with their trash haulers to see what items are picked up for recycling and what should instead be put in the trash. Dech said the PCFA’s website also has information on what is recyclable at www.pcfawc.com/recycling/

Dech told the gathering that Warren County will hold paper shredding
events on May 4 and September 14 from 8-11 a.m. each day, where
residents can bring sensitive documents that will be shredding onsite.
The PCFA will hold its annual Household Hazardous Waste Collection event
on April 28 from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. at their location on Mount Pisgah
Avenue, Oxford, he added.