Holidays a time for recycling waste in Utah landfills

Park City • Bruce Erickson makes a living designing ski areas, but in the days following Christmas he works as an unpaid traffic cop at a Park City recycling yard.

On Saturday, the Recycle Utah board member was making sure the annual influx of packaging and other detritus of consumer culture is directed into the right bins. Effective recycling really comes down to sorting.

Too many ribbons and bows cast in with wrapping paper can render the contents of a 40-yard container into so much trash. Such remnants of yuletide giving expands Utah's municipal waste stream by at least 25 percent during the holidays, and recyclers would like to capture as much as possible.

Recycle Utah, a non-profit serving Summit County year round, is trying to make it easy for residents by operating a one-stop drop-off for everything from spent batteries and plastic bags to Christmas decorations and skis.

The is the revenue-generating arm of the Park City Conservation Association, whose main interest is protecting water quality. The idea is to keep consumer waste out of landfills, where its chemical content can leach into the ground.

"We can generate enough revenue [by selling recycled commodities] to support our education programs," said Erickson, whose main role is to help raise money to buy equipment.

Thanks to Recycle Utah, Park City has the state's highest rate of participation in recycling, but that isn't saying much since not many states have lower rates than Utah. Municipalities want to change that, and not just because recycling is good for the environment by reducing energy use, conserving raw materials and protecting air and water quality.

Recycling is good government because it prolongs the lives of landfills and creates jobs and new revenue streams, according Ashlee Yoder, Salt Lake County's sustainability coordinator.

Last year county Mayor Ben McAdams set a goal to increase recycling by 20 percent over two years. Salt Lake County reached 8 percent by the end of the first year and is on track to meet the 20 percent goal.

"As residents we need to do our part and that means separate those plastics and cardboards so they can be more recyclable," Yoder said. "We want to encourage residents to do more than just put material in the blue bins, but become more involved in the process."

Most residents along the Wasatch Front can leave live-cut Christmas trees on the curb or nearby parks for pick up. Just be sure to strip them of all decorations and lights. Waste managers turn such green waste into mulch, but tinsel and flocking can wreck the equipment and is not good for the soil.

The acidity of fir, pine and other evergreens poses enough of a problem. Mulch from these trees must be mixed with nitrogen-rich compost, like fall leaves, according to Yoder.

In other states, Christmas trees are used to improve habitat for fish and wildlife, aid in environmental restoration such as the rebuilding of storm-ravaged dunes and islands, and generate power, according to the National Christmas Tree Association.

Recycle Utah doesn't handle trees or other green waste, but it takes nearly everything else that can be recycled, even old TVs for those willing to pay a fee of $10 to $20.

On Saturday, cardboard boxes and their Styrofoam packing material poured in, which was great for the non-profit's bottom line as long as colored Styrofoam didn't get mixed with the white.

Erickson looked over a mountain of this squeaky stuff, technically known as expanded polystyrene, or EPS, that had come over the course of a day.

"This is a dozen wine bottles someone got for Christmas," said Erickson, picking up a slab shaped like a 12-cylinder engine block. "This is a TV."

The material is waiting to be shredded and compressed in a new $35,000 machine that squeezes out a long, white 4-by-4-inch strand. It is cut into 1-meter sticks, each weighing about 7 pounds, that are stacked on pallets and shipped to a firm in Salt Lake City that turns out fresh packaging material.

Packing peanuts are worthless because they tend to blow all over, Erickson said.

Some holiday stuff can't be recycled because it contains a composite of materials that aren't readily separated, such as ribbon, bows and gift wrap that has a glossy surface or has metallic foil designs. Insa Riepen, Recycle Utah's executive director, advises selecting recyclable products when shopping for Christmas decor.

"Go easy on the bows and ribbons. Ban the bows would be a good headline. They are not recyclable," Riepen said. "Anything that tears is paper. If it's the crunchy stuff, it is not recyclable."

Many materials can be rendered worse than worthless if they wind up in the wrong bin or get contaminated. Wet cardboard, for instance, gums up shredding and bailing equipment. So do loose plastic bags, although Recycle Utah still takes them.

Food and liquids must be kept out of the blue bins used for residential pickups. A carelessly deposited soda can ruin everything in it.

Glass, which should never go in a blue bin, is perhaps the single largest category of recycled material by weight, but it is among the least profitable. At Recycle Utah, proceeds from valuable commodities, such as plastics and metal, defrays the cost of handling glass, batteries and TVs.

Appliances and electronics require specialized attention since they need to be dismantled to extract useful materials that are sometimes toxic. A coffee grinder? Erickson advised one resident to discard it.

To maximize the value of glass, it should be segregated by color. You don't want brown beer bottles in the bin for green and clear glass. Mixed glass is useful for fiberglass but not much else, while green and clear still has a future as glass.

"No wine maker uses brown bottles," Erickson said. Yet some bottles have value the way they are, he added, pointing out barrels for cobalt blue vodka bottles and fancy clear ones that contained specialty brands of whiskey.

Artists cut these up and use the pieces in sculptures and decorations. Meanwhile, Erickson hopes someone will figure out how to recycle ski equipment. Boots, poles and skis pile up in the warehouse since options for salvaging their materials remain limited.

The key is to find an end use for stuff.

bmaffly@sltrib.com