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3 <br />Memorandum <br />To: Board of Orange County Commissioners <br />Through: Laura Blackmon, County Manager <br />From: Gayle Wilson, Solid Waste Management Director <br />Subject: Recommendation from Solid Waste Plan Work Group on Managing <br />County-Collected Recyciables <br />Date: March 6, 2008 <br />At its November 28th 2007 meeting, the Solid Waste Plan Work Group voted to <br />recommend to the Board of Orange County Commissioners a change in the County's <br />method of handling recyclables that are presently delivered to the current processing <br />facility on Eubanks Road. The Work Group recommends that all recyclable cans and <br />bottles be commingled, eliminating the source-separation requirement now in effect at <br />drop-off sites and commercial sites, and transferring those commingled cans and bottles <br />in transfer trailers to private sorting facilities out-of-county. Additionally, these newly <br />commingled cans and bottles would be combined with those cans and bottles now <br />collected from the multifamily and rural curbside programs to make larger, more <br />economically transported loads. <br />This proposal would result in a projected labor and fuel savings of $100,000 a year in <br />materials processing and hauling costs compared to current practices (see attachment 1). <br />All paper collected from those programs involved would continue to be transferred as it is <br />now to existing private regional paper processing facilities, but the paper recycling <br />program might also use any new transferring equipment to increase load size and reduce <br />the number of truck trips required to bring paper to market. <br />Background <br />Orange County operates four recycling programs from which materials are hauled back to <br />our processing area at Eubanks Road and subsequently transferred to private facilities for <br />sale and further processing into end products. Currently, materials from the commercial <br />bottle and can collection and the drop-off programs are collected source-separated in a <br />six-way sort by three colors of glass bottles, metal cans, plastic bottles, and paper. County <br />staff collects, cleans, bales, and trucks those materials to market using primarily 40 cubic <br />yard roll-off containers along with some tractor trailers loads for baled plastic bottles and <br />steel cans. <br />Materials from rural curbside recycling and multifamily sites are collected in a two-sort <br />program where cans and bottles are in one bin and paper in the other. Those materials are <br />also brought back to the County's processing area and consolidated from curbside <br />