Regulations Can Restrict Markets

Should selling wood chips into the waste-to-energy market count as recycling?

That was one of the intriguing topics of the New England Chapter Meeting of the Construction Materials Recycling Association (CMRA), held in November in Hampton, N.H.

Regulators from five states— Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont—were part of a panel discussion on C&D issues in New England, with most of the major C&D recyclers in the area in the audience. After the regulators made short presentations about what was happening in their respective states concerning C&D materials, the audience was allowed to ask them questions.

The presentations each state made provided a light on the complicated C&D situation. For example, James McQuade of Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) reported that his state generated 4.4 million tons of C&D each year, with about 3 million of that being asphalt, brick and concrete (ABC). About 56 percent of the C&D material is recycled, but only 3 percent of that is mixed C&D, with the ABC making up the bulk of what is recycled.

These numbers present a problem, as a legislative ban on unprocessed C&D entering the state’s landfills will begin late next year, and the markets are not currently there to make it work. In addition, like all New England states, Massachusetts does not recognize the wood fuel market as being recycling. It does consider alternative daily cover recycling.

New Hampshire has almost as much C&D waste coming into it (175,000 tons) as it generates (250,000 tons), according to Chris Way, of the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (NHDES). As in the rest of the New England states, there are restrictions on C&D wood used as mulch and in the sale of demolition wood chips into the wood fuel market.

James “Buzz” Surwilo of the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation said his state has been focusing upstream of recycling by promoting waste reduction. Its only C&D landfill is closing shortly, and the next one is not expected online until late 2003 at the earliest. Currently, any 10,000 sq. ft. or larger construction project must have a conditional permit that outlines the project’s recycling plan and the implementation of that plan.

Much of the current wood fuel market feeds boilers in Maine, and that state is looking more closely at fuel stocks “to see what is in them,” says Randy McMullin, of the Maine DEP. The state will particularly focus on PCBs and arsenic. Currently in the state, a power-generating facility can burn as much as 50 percent C&D wood before it is required to get a solid waste permit to operate.

Connecticut has a special dichotomy for C&D, according to the DEP’s Frank Gagliardo—construction debris is considered municipal solid waste (MSW) while demolition debris is classified as bulky waste. In 2000, the state generated 690,000 tons of C&D debris, with 357,000 tons being volume-reduced, 41,000 tons made into new products, and 300,000 tons disposed of. But a substantial amount of the state’s C&D debris is not represented in this count, as it is shipped directly from the jobsite into Pennsylvania, where tipping fees are lower.

In the question and answer period the regulators were asked why wood fuel made from C&D is not considered recycling. “Isn’t it better that it goes up a smokestack in Maine as CO² than to come back to us from Ohio in the form of methane,” was the gist of a question asked by the group. Two regulators did not respond. Of the three who did, Way of New Hampshire said that changing burning of C&D wood for fuel to a recycling status had come up in agency discussions, but management has not thus far changed the definition. He urged recyclers to become involved to promote the change.

Connecticut has had similar discussions, but climate change issues are coming to the forefront at the DEP, said Gagliardo. He was unsure whether the state’s view would ever change to consider burning the chips as recycling.

Massachusetts’ McQuade admitted that combustion is not considered recycling because of an association with the burning of MSW. If the agency were to allow C&D wood fuel to be considered recycling, he said, then it would have to consider MSW burning as recycling, and no one was ready to do that. But DEP is considering the burning of wood brush as recycling, and if that were to happen perhaps the definition could be expanded to include all wood.

Noticeable by its absence was the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. The agency said its employees were too busy to attend. Recyclers were disappointed not to hear from the agency in a state where two prominent developments have taken place.

The recent demise of independent recycler N.E.E.D. has changed the C&D picture in Rhode Island. Also in that state, the quasi-governmental state landfill, which handles a large majority of the state’s waste, has a contract with Recovermat to make alternative daily landfill cover at the site.

The regulators’ presentations were preceded by a report on the C&D-derived fuel market in New England by Leo Larochelle of CMRA member ERRCO, Epping, N.H. He also provided information on the characteristics of C&D wood.