Orange County NC Website
~I <br />It is important to note that the impact of any landfill bans will be different on each of the three <br />distinct sectors that deliver waste to the MSW Landfill (Residential, Multifamily, and <br />Commercial). .Other issues that should be. considered when contemplating bans include <br />enforceability, the estimated percent of the banned material that is reasonably recoverable, public <br />resistance to any potential bans, the recycling program's ability to manage the banned materials, <br />and the time and effort needed to prepare for and implement associated recycling efforts. <br />Additionally, when considering the space-saving consequences of a ban, it is important to <br />consider not only the tons of ma#erial diverted, but more importantly the volume or space that the <br />material would occupy in the landfill. W pile this may seem a subtle disfanction, because <br />different materials behave differently when compacted and as they age , in the landfill <br />environment, a material that may generate a large tonnage diversion such as food waste may not <br />necessarily result in a large amount of space-savings due to the materials density and <br />composition. Food waste, for example, is largely water and highly compactable thus high <br />tonnage may not result in high space savings where a low density material might have the <br />opposite impact; low tonnage but higher space savings. <br />The materials staff believed could be considered for landfill bans in this report include: <br />o newspaper, <br />® glossy magazines, <br />~ plastic bottles (a state-wide landfill ban comes into effect on October 1, 2009), <br />® residential corrugated cardboard (a ban of commercially (non-residential) generated <br />conugated cardboard is akeady in effect), <br />® commercially produced waxed corrugated cardboard (heretofore considered "unrecyclable"), <br />® clean wood waste from the residential sector (a ban of commercially generated clean wood <br />waste is akeady in effect), <br />® commercial food waste from lazge generators, and <br />o Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs) that would mostly be televisions and older computer monitors. <br />When considering the implementation of fiu~ther landfill bans, it is important to consider the <br />timing, cost to implement, and amount of landfill space saved. The effort and logistics necessary <br />to put-the bans in place would require staff resources from the County and the Towns and would <br />result in expenses directly to the Solid Waste enterprise fiuad as well as to the municipalities as <br />they make their own enforcement efforts as they've done on the RRMO. <br />Additionally, implementing. all the above listed bans effectively by mid-year 2008-09 would be a <br />very ambitious goal that would only save an estima#ed 1.5 months of landfill space. The public <br />and waste haulers would need significant education and advanced notice prior to the <br />implementation~of'the bans. The original cardboard ban, passed in 1995 and first enforced in <br />1996, took over a yeaz to implement and then another year to make fully effective after getting <br />municipalities involved and further fine-tuning. The P12M0 took two years to become effective, <br />and has resulted in ~ significant shift of construction and demolition waste tonnage from the <br />County's facility to certified private out-of-County processors for sorting as well as some <br />`sneaking away.' to private landfills. <br />In terms of space-savings, different items result in different amounts of diversion and landfill <br />space saved. While implementing a ban of the lead-bearing Cathode Ray Tubes commonly <br />associated with televisions ~ and computer monitors will not result in significant space savings, it <br />3 <br />