The cost to dispose of trash and demolition debris is going up, while the value of recyclables is going down at the Greenfield Recycling Center.
The causes are connected to global market fluctuations and the pandemic, according to Recycling Center Supervisor C.J. Hall.
After consulting with Monadnock Disposal Servicers (MDS), the company that services the town’s trash compactor and demolition dumpster, earlier this year, Hall said he was given a loose estimate that costs for trash and demo disposal would rise 30 percent from $100 per ton to $130 per ton.
However, after receiving a quote, Hall said the actual price for the town in 2023 will be $165 per ton for demolition and $155 per ton for trash, both more than 50 percent. The town’s five-year contract with MDS will end in January, and the town’s new contract will be for one year.
Reasons for the price increases include the cost of trucking, made more expensive because of rises in diesel fuel, Hall said, as well as uncertainty that exists in the landfill industry. Hall explained that New Hampshire has only one sanitary private landfill left and that it accepts waste from out of state.
“The rest of New England has next to none,” he said, adding that anything not burned in a trash-to-energy plant is, for the most part, shipped out of the region.
The bottom line is that these landfills are running out of permitted space and this is driving up prices. Trash haulers, Hall added, are now looking at shipping refuse by rail to Nevada.
“Because of their bulk, some places are no longer accepting mattresses and box springs or charging very high disposal fees for taking them,” Hall told The Greenfield Spirit. “It is currently not a pretty picture out there relating to garbage disposal.”
The price of tire disposal increased early in the year, but the recycling center’s fees were kept at the 2021 rate. For 2023, reflecting increased cost, Hall said fees will rise from $3 per car tire (with or without rims) to $5 per tire. Disposing of truck tires will go from $16 to $20 per tire. Old tires filled with mud and dirt will be $8 per tire.
Charges for car tires are disproportionately lower than truck tires, Hall explained, because there is a good secondary market for used/unused road-worthy car tires. About 15 percent of the tires turned in fit this category, he said, adding that fees for electronics and refrigerator/air conditioning units will likely be maintained at their current levels.
“In the past, these changes in cost have been more incremental,” Hall said, explaining that economic factors are contributing to the increases and while there’s some offset by fees, this has minimal impact.
As disposal costs have gone up, prices for recyclables have gone down, and this means the town brings in less revenue for what they recycle. Light iron, which includes the metals from a number of appliances, sheet metal, bicycle frames and other material, went from a high of $230 per ton in June to the current price of $85 per ton. Hall said shipments of light iron were held back in the hopes of a price recovery but that doesn’t appear to be happening.
Hall explained that having a backlog and speculating on the market can be a way to make money on some recyclable items, but that the global market is difficult to predict. One factor in the low price of recyclables has been China’s repeated shutdowns relating to their COVID control policies, he said.
“They are the world’s largest consumer of recyclables,” he said.
Regarding light iron, Hall said Turkey was a large purchaser, but that because of the devaluation of their currency against the dollar, the market has collapsed.
“As you can see, the recyclables markets are international. One of the purchasers of our baled cardboard [who came by recently] gave us the current price for cardboard at $35 per ton. Last year, it was $200 per ton,” he said. “These price changes reflect supply-and-demand fluctuations in the market. For the most part, we are back to pre-COVID prices.”
Light iron is now being shipped out at $85 per ton, Hall said, adding that the market remains highly unpredictable.
On a positive note, Hall pointed out that $22,000 from recycling, which goes to the town, has helped to offset the rising costs of disposal.
“We’ve done well,” he said. “Most things have a backlog.”