Agenda - 03-18-2014-13 (2) - Laserfiche WebLink

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INFORMATION ITEM M emorandum To: Barry Jacobs, Chair - Board of County Commissioners Michael Talbert, County Manager From: Gayle Wilson, Director, Solid Waste Management &abject: Description of Meetingswith Waste Zero and Green Stream Date: March 3, 2014 On January 2, 2014, Grange County Board Chair Barry Jacobs, Vice Chair Earl McKee and Board member Bernadette Polissier, Manager Michael Talbert, Sblid Waste Director Gayle Wilson and Solid Waste Ranner Blair Pollock hosted a meetingwith the company Waste Zero represented in North Carolina by Greg Poverall, salesdirector and Ninaglosberg- Landis, customer relationship liaison. Waste Zero presented their concept of implementing a turn -key Pay As You Throw (PAYT) residential" trash metering" program designed to reduce solid waste through charging by the bag. While the company's southeastern base is North Carolina, they have no operating programs in the state. Most of their fee -based programs operate in Massachusetts and Maine where landfill costs are typically higher. Almost all known Waste Zero programs are for curbside based municipal waste collection programs, while Orange County operates only convenience centers for drop -off of residential waste. Waste Zero does provide custom made trash bags for some counties' PAYT programs at their convenience centers. Orange County staff noted that its residential waste generation per household is already at or below the 1,200 lbs. per household that Waste Zero considers a benchmark for success of PAYT programs Afollow up meeting between Waste Zero and County staff is scheduled for July 15 following further research by Waste Zero on how their program might work at Sblid Waste Convenience Centers and other opportunities for incorporating PAYT strategies into overall County waste management. On February 18, 2014 County Board Chair Jacobs, Board member Polissier, Solid Waste Director Wilson and Solid Waste Ranner Pollock hosted a meeting with a group calling itself Green Stream consisting of Sjbil Tate, Lyle Estill founder of Redmont Biofuels, Amy Brooks of Brooks Contractor, the County's food waste collection company and Leif Forer, a free -lance organics researcher. The purpose of the meeting wasfor Green Stream to present information on creating an anaerobic digestion systems and collection infrastructure to manage organicwastes from Orange County and perhaps other nearby j urisdict ions. The pro -forma Green Stream presented from the "Zero Waste Energy company uses a design called Smart Ferm that presumes delivery of 20,000 tons of organic material, half yard waste and half food waste, to a centrally located anaerobic digester to produce methane gas and a compost -like product generally known as `digestate' left after the methane gas is produced from the incoming organics. Green Stream presented itself as a `public - private partnership' but is at this point, only aworking group, not aformal corporation or organization. Their stated intent isto..'implement organicwaste diversion programs using anaerobic digestion, weighing technology and rewards programming.' They stated the next steps in their program are to `find a local government partner, conduct a feasibility study for approximately $35,000 and if the feasibility study shows promise, use it to raise a projected $9 million dollars in start -up costs to build the anaerobic digester. Asimilar one operates in San Jose CA.