McELHATTAN -Some people's trash is becoming the Clinton County Solid Waste Authority's treasure thanks to a new and innovative effort to mine more valuables from the landfill in McElhattan.
"It's all about recovering recyclables out of the waste stream," Landfill Manager Jay Alexander said. "By doing so, we can make some money for the landfill and reduce the amount of trash we store, extending the life of the landfill."
Alexander said the idea of pulling clean trash out of the main stream of trash actually occurred to him about six years ago.
The idea was put on the back burner for a time, he said, but when he and his staff members revisited the concept and started crunching numbers, they discovered they could remove nearly 54 tons from the landfill each month.
"A landfill is nothing more than a stockpile for material we haven't figured out how to economically recycle," Alexander said, emphasizing a local philosophy that has sparked a large number of recycling efforts at the local fill, including the capturing of methane gas for heating fuel, a mulch operation and a recycling center for tires, glass, cardboard and other materials.
One doesn't usually talk about a bright yellow Volvo excavator, grappler and magnet as a green machine, but there it is - on top of the day's delivery, crawling about the myriad of materials, seeking treasurers.
Alexander looked out at the process and then pointed to several large metal bins nearby.
"That's for high quality metal, that one's for cardboard and the other is for cardboard," he said. "All we had to do was put a grapple and magnet on it and hire a guy to run through the deliveries and separate the chafe from the seeds ... We've had tremendous results."
The results?
The machine and its operator collect 40 tons of wood, 12 tons of metal, and two tons of cardboard monthly.
A short drive down a dirt road and Alexander shows off the results of those labors.
The materials are piled into their individual storage areas, are processed, recycled and then sold in individual markets when the prices are most advantageous to the waste authority.
By some accounts, the amounts collected appear small. The landfill receives about 12,500 tons of waste per month in 75 to 125 trucks a day
But looking at it another way - the green way -Alexander points out that the fill generates only 48 percent of its income from waste disposal and storage. The remainder of the revenue stream is like this current effort, turning trash to treasure by recycling, generating methane gas and such, and investing any money that lands on the plus side of the ledger as a hedge against future needs.
Alexander said the landfill had a moderate setback when the commodity prices dropped sharply in the first year, so instead of paying for itself in the first year, the payback is over a two year period, for a "still very reasonable $150,000."
As the excavator crawls over the landfill, about 35 goats roam nearby. The parents were donated some years ago, Alexander said, and the herd now makes its living cleaning the acres of high grass and other vegetation.
Alexander pointed to the heavy traffic from nearby Route 220 and said the goats offer two benefits. They "recycle" and they act as a public relations department, showing the motoring world exactly how the authority and landfill approach waste disposal.
