According to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, nearly 655,222 tons of waste were disposed of in Montgomery County in 2022, the most recent year reported by the state agency. That same year, the Montgomery County Solid Waste District reported approximately 530,815 tons of recyclables.
Earth Day is Monday. Montgomery County Solid Waste District Manager John Woodman said his agency is working to spread the word about what can and cannot be recycled, but also pointed to other ways to prevent waste from accumulating in landfills.
Woodman said it’s actually about landfill diversion. You can recycle. You can reuse items. You can even compost many of the things you want to throw away.
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Garbage trucks from collection services across Montgomery County line up outside the South Facility dump site every day to unload commercial and residential trash.
Woodman said anything anyone wants to throw away ends up here.
The Solid Waste District is Montgomery County’s transfer facility for all waste and is home to the county’s recycling shed. Montgomery County residents can drop off a variety of items, from small electronics to cardboard to used oil.
Lately, enough people have dropped off their eclipse glasses to fill five large boxes.
The county is also working to determine what people are throwing away instead of recycling.
The county’s Solid Waste District conducted a waste audit Thursday morning, opening trash bags on the dump floor to see what could be recycled.
Some of the recyclable materials they look for include the following:
- Glass bottles and jars
- Aluminum cans, steel cans and lids, aerosol cans with lids and tips removed
- Plastic bottles and bottles with small mouths and wide bases, such as milk jugs, soda bottles, laundry detergent bottles, water bottles, shampoo bottles and contact solution bottles
- Plastic tubs for holding cream, sour cream, cheese, yogurt, jelly and fruit slices; will fall under the tub category.Caps should be replaced before recycling
- Fast drink cup, but discard the straw and replace the lid.Plastic cups are also recyclable
- Newspapers, magazines, cardboard, mixed office paper and envelopes, cereal box cardboard, pizza boxes free of food scraps and grease, phone books, junk mail and catalogs
- Food and beverage cartons for storing milk, broth and other products
The items are sorted into bins by their type, weighed and then recycled.
Waste audits help solid waste staff understand what recyclable items people are throwing away, Woodman said.
The easiest materials to recycle are usually metals. Common recyclables are aluminum cans and other metal cans used to store food, and solid waste staff saw dozens during Thursday’s waste audit.
Beer bottles and other glass containers are also common household items that can be recycled.
Batteries can also be recycled, and Montgomery County is accepting them during Tuesday’s hazardous materials drop-off event.
Waste collectors advise people not to throw away batteries as they can easily cause fires due to the large amounts of paper and plastic.
Not all plastic can be recycled
Recyclers put items in bins with good intentions, but not all single-use products can be recycled.
For example, plastic clamshell containers used to store items like berries or other produce cannot be recycled, said Molly Kennedy, communications coordinator for the Dayton district of Rumpke.
Another common confusing item is plastic grocery bags. Woodman said plastic bags can cause a lot of damage to equipment in waste treatment facilities because they stick to parts of different machines.
Woodman suggested that people who want to reduce the number of plastic bags ending up in landfills should return them to their respective grocery stores or retailers.
Some products are also marketed for entering facilities covered in waste or grease. Woodman said contamination is the number one reason recyclables are thrown away.
For example, a peanut butter jar cannot be recycled if it is still covered in peanut butter; the same is true if the lid of a pizza box is covered in cheese and grease. Tin cans used to store cooking grease are also not recyclable.
Just take a moment to wipe or rinse them off before placing them in the recycling bin, Woodman said.
Recyclables travel through southwestern Ohio and beyond
Woodman’s facility has nearly 100 trucks and about 2,500 tons of trash every day, but none of the trash stays at his transfer station for long. Rumpke usually has the trash removed within 24 hours.
From there, Rumpke will likely transport the waste to its large materials recycling facility on East Monument Avenue in Dayton.
According to facility manager Keith Clack, the facility can process approximately 17-20 tons of cardboard per hour, as well as many other tons of recyclable materials.
The factory also has a glass factory, where Rumpke workers take glass containers and bottles to a glass mill where the glass is broken down into small fragments and even fine dust that can be recycled.
To do this, the factory transports the glass through multiple stages, removes the paper from the glass, sorts it by color, and then breaks it down. Dayton Glass Plant Manager Brad Cameron said the company that makes the insulation uses powdered glass.
Although Dayton has its own landfill, Montgomery County waste can be sent to the Rumpke facility or to a landfill in Cincinnati.
“Our job is to get our customers to recycle as many items as possible, not only reducing the amount of waste that goes into landfills, but also helping to create more reusable items,” Kennedy said. Our aim is to provide sustainable solutions to the communities and businesses we serve, ensuring that our collective efforts contribute to a cleaner, greener world today and into the future.
#recycling
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