There is great news concerning our municipal recycling program. The currently very strong markets for the used materials we produce from our homes and set out for curbside collection are now giving us even better reasons to recycle everything possible.

There has always been an important economic reason to recycle: we’ve been paying lots of money to dump our refuse (garbage) in Newark, and we’ve been paying much less to dispose of recyclables such as our commingled bottles and cans. We’ve even been earning about $35 per ton for our mixed paper. That has always meant a great savings for our limited tax dollars.

Now those numbers are even much more compelling.

First, the bad news: refuse disposal costs have continued to increase, and we now spend as much as $90 for every ton of refuse our trucks carry to the Essex Incinerator.

But the great news is that thanks to a new recycling contract negotiated by the  Montclair Department of Community Services, we will no longer pay that lesser amount to dispose of our “commingled”, we will now actually earn $15 for every ton of the metal, glass, and plastic bottles and cans we recycle. And instead of that $35 per ton for our mixed paper, now we are being paid well over twice that amount.

Remember, every time we earn money for a ton of recyclables we are also saving another $90 from avoiding the tipping fee at the incinerator.
As we’ve often pointed out, there is a huge difference between throwing your bottles and cans, newspapers and junk mail in the trash, or else placing them in your recycling bin. We either choose to pay for disposal of an item or else get paid for the same item, depending upon which container it ends up in at home.

Let’s make this perfectly clear. We estimate that as much as one-third of our approximately 15,000 tons per year of refuse is still recyclable paper, because not everyone is recycling, and even those who are, aren’t recycling everything they can.

If 5,000 tons of our annual garbage tonnage is used paper, we have lost its value as recyclable mixed paper. As mixed paper, it could earn us over $450,000. If instead we collect it as garbage, it will cost us $450,000.

Spending almost a half million dollars to burn something worth almost a half million dollars means we are wasting almost one million dollars! And as they say, “pretty soon you’re talking real money” to a citizenry that claims to want to cut costs.

By not aggressively recycling every single envelope, magazine, cereal box, and scrap of office paper, the same residents complaining about high taxes have been literally burning their own money.

Simply put, we must start now to reinvigorate our recycling participation, in every home, in every apartment building. And we have to make sure that all of our schools, which all generate tons of paper, have successful recycling programs.

And we haven’t even mentioned the well-known environmental benefits, or the prevention of global warming from the significant energy savings, we get from recycling.

Recycling is one of the most important environmental actions that everyone can take, today, in their own home. And like other steps to sustainability, it also saves money and energy, and is good for our community, and for our country. Let’s get re-invigorated!

For further information, call the Dept. of Environmental Affairs: (973) 509-5721.