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A reader asks: I’d like to know if municipal “recycling” really gets recycled. I live in Dartmouth and there is a “recycling” bin pick-up process, but does it really get recycled? Where, how much, what are the economics, where do the recycled materials and the un-recyclable materials go? I want to know if recycling is actually “helpful” or are we kidding ourselves?
As people break down cardboard shipping boxes, rinse out plastic yogurt tubs and collect aluminum cans, it’s common to wonder: Is this really helping?
This is the latest installment of a series that answers questions about what’s going on in New Bedford. Ask the Light your question here and our reporters will look into it for you.
We’ve all been told it’s important to recycle, but low recycling rates and industry failures have left many questioning what recycling actually does.
On the South Coast, recycling works. And it’s vital.
Does municipal recycling actually get recycled?
The short answer is yes.
In New Bedford, the city picks up recycling along with trash once a week. From there, it’s sent to a Material Recovery Facility (or MRF, pronounced “murf”) in Rochester, called Zero Waste Solutions, where it’s separated. New Bedford pays Zero Waste Solutions a $114 per ton recycling processing fee, according to Jessica Camarena, assistant project manager and recycling coordinator at New Bedford’s Department of Facilities and Fleet Management.
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection estimates that at one of the state’s nine MRFs, approximately 90% of the materials processed are recycled. However, Camarena said the hauler servicing New Bedford does not provide specific information on material destinations.
Camarena said most of the materials that aren’t recycled typically weren’t recyclable in the first place. One of the top unrecyclable materials is plastic bags and plastic wrap.
Zero Waste Solutions sells the separated materials to whoever will buy them, Camarena said. For example, Aaron Industries, a plastics manufacturer in Leominster, buys recycled plastic and combines it with virgin plastic, and then sells the material to companies like Ikea.
Dartmouth’s recyclables get distributed to various facilities across the state, including Mid City Scrap in Westport, and Fairhaven’s curbside recycling also goes to Zero Waste Solutions, according to both town’s respective public works directors, Tim Barber and Vincent Furtado.
The money the MRF makes goes back into running its facility, and the city pays the MRF to recycle less profitable materials such as cardboard because it’s cheaper to recycle than to overfill New Bedford’s landfill.
Is recycling actually helpful?
New Bedford and Dartmouth share the Crapo Hill Landfill. Because the landfill is so close, it’s a cheap, effective way to dispose of solid waste. But Massachusetts has strict waste disposal bans and is working toward a 2030 Solid Waste Master Plan, so extending the landfill’s lifespan is important.
Because New Bedford has its own landfill, Camarena said the city pays $24.01 per ton to dispose of solid waste in the landfill. By comparison, the market rate averages $110 per ton.
So, even though the $114 cost per ton of recycling far outweighs the cost of disposing of solid waste, recycling is much cheaper in the long run. As soon as New Bedford’s landfill fills up, the cost of solid waste disposal will skyrocket.
In fiscal year 2024, the city spent $768,393 putting 31,999 tons into the landfill. At market rates, this would have cost approximately $3.52 million.
“[This] is why it’s so imperative that we treasure [the landfill] as much as possible,” Camarena said. “The longer we keep that open, the less money we have to spend in the long run.”
The Greater New Bedford Regional Refuse Management District estimates that the landfill has saved its communities more than $75 million in waste disposal costs since it opened in 1995 — over $2 million a year.
The landfill accepts about 75,000 tons of solid waste per year, roughly 50% of which is residential solid waste from Dartmouth and New Bedford. Fairhaven doesn’t use a landfill, instead relying on an incinerator in Rochester. This, Furtado said, is also more costly than recycling.
Camarena, Barber and Furtado all said recycling is cheaper for their towns — and the taxpayer — than solid waste disposal. So it’s in every resident’s interest to recycle as much as possible.
Recycling well
Making sure that proper materials are being recycled is vital to this mission.
Technology has evolved enough that things like greasy pizza boxes are now recyclable. But plastic bags and plastic wrap — called tanglers — get caught in mechanisms and workers have to cut them out of machines.
Residents should put only loose items in their recycling bins. Loading everything in a bag, even a paper one, means it will all get compacted together. And once plastic, cardboard and aluminum can’t be separated, they’re no longer recyclable.
Camarena said New Bedford shines in this area.
“[The MRF] always said that New Bedford recycling was the cleanest,” Camarena said. “Residents are doing a good job, and we’re also doing a good job communicating to the residents.”
The landfill plays a role in this, too. Barber said that if a solid waste load from Dartmouth is more than 10% recyclable, the city will receive a noncompliance letter from Crapo Hill and the Department of Environmental Protection.
Extending the landfill’s lifespan is an ongoing project. About 20% of what goes in the landfill is food waste, Camarena said. If we can convert that, she said, that’s 20% more life expectancy for the landfill.
That’s where New Bedford’s Recycling Center comes in. The center takes food waste, which it then sends to a facility in Rhode Island with an aerobic digester, which breaks down organic material, turning it into renewable energy.
Camarena runs the center, which also accepts rechargeable batteries, cooking oil, styrofoam, string lights, clothes and textiles (for donation), scrap metal, computers and televisions, rigid plastic, motor oil filters, motor oil, antifreeze, brush and leaves. All of these take up unnecessary space in landfill, and can be sustainably disposed of.
The recycling center pays to recycle all of these materials, except for scrap metal and string lights, which make a profit.
The center’s swap shop accepts books, tableware, cookware and other household items, and the paint swap shed is available to donate and pick up mostly-full paint cans. The swap shop is open to the city’s Fresh Start program, which helps families who have been displaced, and the center also partners with CMRK, a donations program.
The Recycling Center is free to New Bedford residents; every material will be recycled or donated and will not end up in the city’s landfill.
“Little by little,” Camarena said, “we’re trying to make this place user-friendly and welcoming.”
The Recycling Center is funded through a Sustainable Materials Recovery Program Grant from the DEP. Camarena estimates that it costs about $72,000 to run the Recycling Center, and she said keeping the doors open would be impossible without the grant.
“We don’t make money off of it,” Camarena said. Still, she added, “[It’s] just as important for us to make sure that it doesn’t go to the trash.”
Fairhaven’s Recycling Center, which requires a permit, and Dartmouth’s Transfer Station, are open to town residents and collect similar items.
Abigail Pritchard, a graduate student in the Boston University journalism program, is a frequent contributor to The New Bedford Light. She can be reached at apritchard@newbedfordlight.org.
I have a hard time believing the statement that “New Bedford recycling was the cleanest “. You’d be hard pressed to walk down any residential street and find a recycling bin that don’t have plastic bags in them.
I wonder about the recycling stream every day. This is encouraging but for one sentence: “The hauler servicing New Bedford does not provide specific information on material destination.”
Until there is more clarity about destination, the harder it is to keep it working.
That said , I still recycle everything I can-it may not be perfect but better than the alternative.
How will knowing the destination change your evaluation??
Many years ago the CITY of New Bedford almost bought a smoke free incinerator. Today’s smokeless incinerators are way more advanced and efficient. This is what our city needs.
I agree, Mr. Janson. We should be burning our recycling.
Burn reusable materials?
Excellent reporting! More of this independent, unbiased, local, informative, and inspiring journalism. Thank you for enlightening the community and answering these hard-to-query, frequently asked questions about the utility or futility of muni recycling.
Agree with prior comment that the public should have an accounting from contracted haulers of actual recycled tonnage, and cost savings. This reporting would help dispel scepticism and encourage better compliance by showing cost savings that result from a cleaner recycling stream.
An improved MA bottle bill that follows examples of ME and CT results in much higher bottle/can redemption and less roadside-to-waterway litter. Deposit-return systems ensure highly efficient can-to-can actual recycling, glass reclamation not landfilling, and plastic disposal paid by producers rather than at consumers’ muni recycling expense.
An updated and expanded bottle bill passed in the MA Senate in 2024, but was not voted on by MA House, thus died in the last legislative session.
https://malegislature.gov/PressRoom/Detail?pressReleaseId=106
Like state and city politics, trash hauling (including recycling) is a shady business, just another loss for the taxpayers.
“Recycling is an asprin alleviating a rather large collective hangover– overconsumption.”
Until we face the fact about the consumption crises and the only thing that matters is growing the economy by consumption, we are litterally called consumers and the US has less than 5% of the world’s population, recycling will be seen as the solution buts its actually the problem.
Manufacturers use a cradle to grave approach to get their products through the system as fast as possible without thinking about recycling which is then passed along to the next step, the recyclers trying to figure out what to do with all this material.
The real solution is to hold the manufactures responsible for a cradle to cradle manufacture process where materials are easily broken down for the next step in the cycle.
I know, it’s not the way people think but to solve challenges people must think outside the way the problem was created in the first place.
Side note, I worked in metal recycling for 5 years, it’s not a clean or green solution but part of the overall process in the consumption crisis!
When the Crapo Hill landfill is no longer an option for solid waste disposal, and the projected cost increase 6X the current rate per ton, that burden can’t, and shouldn’t be passed on to the city’s tax payers, all additional cost increases should be paid for in fees per person, it’s the only fair way to address it. A perfect example, my home is a single family house with 3 of us, one neighbor next door is a two story house with one family in each apartment, one apartment has 4 people, the other has 6 people in it, that’s 4X the cost for solid waste, and recycling costs, and just multiplying the property taxes doesn’t even out the costs.
I feel like the solid waste, and recycling costs should be subtracted from the property taxes, and a fee per person is the only fair way, and it would certainly make them all much more interested in recycling.