BURLINGTON WEATHER

How Burlington Works

Today is America Recycles Day, and most of us are doing our best. We rinse the jar, flatten the box, and drop it in the bin feeling pretty good about it.

But Scott Pozerski, who owns the Middlesex County Junk King franchise, says good intentions can backfire. "If we can educate the people… then the recycling stream is good," he said. "If not, a lot of that stuff gets thrown away."

Why one wrong item matters

While people tend to see recycling as a public good, Pozerski explained that it’s also a business, and the market decides what's worth taking. Because online shopping keeps demand for boxes high, cardboard is the bright spot. His company can drop it off for free, while most other materials cost money to get rid of. But many plastics (like #5 or #6) don’t have much value, and what a recycler can't sell, nobody wants to handle.

Part of the problem, according to Pozerski, is how recycling gets collected. The truck crushes everything together and dumps it on the floor at the sorting plant, where nobody knows what's in the load until it lands. Plants check periodically, he said, and if a load is too contaminated, it gets sent right back out. "Everything gets loaded back up in the truck and goes to the incinerator, and they charge the town for additional trucking, plus the dump fee."

That's money out of the municipal budget, and it's a lot more expensive than a clean load.

What goes wrong most often

  • Soaked or dirty cardboard. Rain or food grease makes it unusable. Keep it out of the rain until pickup.
  • Food-soiled containers. A rinse makes the difference between recycling and the incinerator.
  • Pizza boxes. Pozerski says it depends on the town and the plant. In Burlington, empty pizza boxes are accepted.
  • Black plastic. Sorting machines read plastic with optical scanners, and they can't "see" black. That includes most microwave-meal trays.
  • Things that aren't recyclable at all. Clothing and lumber show up in bins more than you'd think. He recalled someone who once figured a 2x4 was "basically just paper."

Where the harder stuff should go

  • Batteries. Lithium-ion batteries are a real fire hazard. Pozerski pointed to an eight-alarm transfer station fire in Roxbury last March that may have involved lithium batteries. Because big equipment moves the material and no one is sorting by hand, "those batteries [have got to] be out of the waste stream." Lowe's and Home Depot both have drop-off boxes, and Burlington's household hazardous waste days, held twice a year, also collect batteries.
  • Clothing and linens. Textiles aren't allowed in the trash in Massachusetts. The yellow Planet Aid bins around town take clothing, towels, blankets, and linens, even with holes. They resell what they can, donate what they can’t, and turn the rest into rags; that mix is essential to keep the trucks running.
  • Mattresses. These bulky items are also banned from the trash. Pozerski's company has found recyclers who ship them overseas, which keeps them out of the U.S. waste stream, at least for a while. Here in Burlington, UTEC picks up mattresses and takes them to their Lowell site for disassembly and reclamation.

Where the trash goes

What doesn't get recycled has a long trip. Pozerski said a lot of Massachusetts trash ends up at incinerators in North Andover and Haverhill. It may also go by rail to Ohio or by truck to New York or New Hampshire. There are only so many trucks, he said, and shipping that much material has a real fuel cost.

The bigger picture

Pozerski doesn't pretend to have all the answers. His biggest concern is simple: "We buy a lot of stuff and just throw it out," he said. "I think that's the biggest place for change." In his dream world, packaging would be metal. “If everything came in aluminum or metal, and we didn't have any plastic, it would be a perfectly recyclable system."

While that may be a pipe dream, Pozerski has hope that a little extra awareness will make a difference in consumer behavior, even in the age of one-click delivery. "That instant gratification does come with an environmental cost."

You can learn more about trash and recycling disposal in Burlington, including a list of what is and is not accepted, at the Department of Public Works website.

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