Agenda - Council - 10/14/1980 - Laserfiche WebLink

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could be achieved for yard waste through a combined curb-side pickup and back yard composting campaign. Therfore, yard waste recycling has the potential to reduce the solid waste stream by at least eight percent. 3. OTHER SYSTEMS There are several other, more experimental processes that may prove to be viable alternatives, including alcohol production from cellulose materials, cement-like "guup" processes that use demo- lition debris as part of an aggregate and large-scale brush chipping machinery. As research data becomes available for these systems, further assessments of their disposal abatement poten- tials should be completed. The disposal of diseased shade tree waste in the Region has historically been an additional burden Qn the landfills. In the past two to three years, however, landfill operators have pur- posely raised the drop charge for tree waste to the point that it is now prohibitively expensive. Also, the recovery rate of this valuable wood resource has increased through the use of tree chippers, sawmills and firewood production. Still, small amounts of wood waste are being landfilled that could be poten- tially utilized. PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS Resource recovery technologies, in conjunction with waste separa- tion and waste processing methods, are capable of reducing the solid waste stream by a total of 75 percent. Several existing high-technology facilities already recover 70 to 75 percent of the solid waste stream, including Madison's RDF facility (Boley, Madison Public Works) and the Dano composting process (Dano Resource Recovery, Inc., 1978). Both of these high-technology processes rely on materials recycling to attain these high re- covery rates. It is realistic to assume that three percent of the Region's waste could be processed by other systems by the year 2000.