Sorting through state's trash reveals missed opportunities in recycling and composting

Yahoo

30-04-2025

Workers sorted through municipal solid waste, shown here, and construction and demolition debris to get a better understanding of what's in New Hampshire's trash. (Screenshot from presentation by John Culbertson, vice president of MSW Consultants)
To get a better understanding of what's in New Hampshire's trash, workers hand-sorted more than 250 samples of garbage around the state and visually surveyed hundreds more.
Those findings will be detailed in a waste characterization study set to be released early next month, with a presentation Friday to the state's Solid Waste Working Group offering a preview. John Culbertson, vice president of MSW Consultants, the Florida-based management consulting firm that completed the study, called it 'a sort of Gallup poll of trash.'
The study focused on municipal solid waste — such as the trash residents bring to the curb — and construction and demolition debris. 'Those are far and away the largest components of solid waste,' Culbertson said, with the two categories making up 952,699 annual tons, or around 87.5% of the state's solid waste disposal, according to data cited in his presentation.
Combining the categories, the team found 41.5% of what was disposed of was not recyclable in New Hampshire. But the other trash included materials that were commonly targeted in recycling programs (14.6%), recyclable through special collection (11.5%), potentially recyclable (8.1%), and recyclable organics (24.3%), such as food waste.
The most common refuse found in municipal solid waste was unpackaged food waste (almost 12%), compostable paper (just under 8%), and packaged food waste (roughly 7%).
'What I see is that a very significant amount of the material that we are throwing away in New Hampshire could be recycled or composted or otherwise better managed,' said Reagan Bissonnette, the executive director of the Northeast Resource Recovery Association, a recycling nonprofit, and a member of the working group.
Culbertson pointed out that recyclables sorted out of the waste were 'highly contaminated' with liquid and grit, meaning some figures could be an 'overstatement.' Like other statistical work, it comes with a margin of error. 'Our results acknowledge that we just can't ever get a perfect knowledge of what's in your disposed waste stream,' he said, stressing the 'nuance underneath just the reported, high-level numbers.'
This study didn't deal with a major hot topic in the state's waste policy discussions: the hundreds of thousands of tons of out-of-state waste that pour into New Hampshire landfills each year, which make up about half of what is dumped there. Nor did researchers venture beyond the state to analyze the composition of New Hampshire trash exports. Instead, it dealt with trash generated and deposited within the state's borders.
It offers insights into how the state can work to meet its diversion goals. New Hampshire has a statutory goal — but not a mandate — to reduce solid waste, in weight, by 25% by 2030 and 45% by 2050. These goals specifically target municipal solid waste and construction and demolition debris.
The preferred way to minimize that waste, as established in the state's official waste management hierarchy, is to reduce it at its source. Then there's recycling and reuse, composting, waste-to-energy, and incineration, in that order. Landfilling is the last resort.
The state has taken some recent steps toward cutting down on food waste. In February, a law went into effect prohibiting 'any person' generating one ton or more of food waste per week from disposing of that waste in a landfill or incinerating it, carving out exceptions if the person is farther than 20 miles from an alternative facility or if there isn't ample capacity at such a facility. The state plans to use federal grant money for a food waste generator study to identify entities subject to the law.
Food releases large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, when dumped in landfills, something supporters of the new law hope it will address.
However, food waste bans have often been ineffective in diverting waste from landfills and incinerators. Out of the first five states to implement one, only Massachusetts succeeded in reducing landfill waste, a paper published in Science in September found. Researchers pointed to frequent inspections, an easy-to-understand law with few exceptions, and a strong composting network as factors likely influencing the state's success.
The waste characterization study found a significant amount of materials commonly targeted for recycling instead ending up in the state's landfills. Bissonnette said education is key, and also pointed to the success of pay-as-you-throw programs that exist in some New Hampshire communities. Trash tonnage in Concord, for instance, has gone down by 40% since the program was implemented in 2009, according to the city.
The reduction was 'pretty much overnight,' Bissonnette said.
'It was so dramatic that city staff called around to other towns to make sure that they weren't suddenly seeing a flood of trash coming from Concord,' Bissonnette said. 'And, no, it really was that people were thinking twice before throwing something away. We saw recycling increase.'
There are opportunities to divert more construction and demolition debris, too. Major components of this waste included wood (29%) and shingles (14.4%), according to the presentation.
In Littleton, Bissonnette's organization worked on a pilot program with the town that allowed for items that would typically be discarded in a construction and demolition debris container to instead be set aside for others to take home and use. That included materials like clean wood, which others could take to burn or use as building materials, or things like doors and windows.
'It was a really significant amount of material that just within, I think it was about a month-and-a-half pilot program, they were able to divert and keep out of the landfill,' Bissonnette said. 'And in that case, it was getting reused instead of recycled, which is even better.'
The study was funded through Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling, or SWIFR, funds made available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The Executive Council approved a $295,500 contract for the project in December 2023.
'A lot of our neighboring states and others have had this information profile, and we felt it would be really important to use these federal funds to get our own data,' said Michael Wimsatt, director of the Department of Environmental Services' waste management division, at the meeting.
He added: 'It's not going to be apples-to-apples comparisons (to other states), but I think it's really going to help us.'