Agenda - Council - 11/25/1980 - Laserfiche WebLink

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- 48 - Table 4 indicates that about 2.8 percent of the waste stream is food waste produced from food processors and canners. This is a presorted organic feedstock, which is readily available for composting, methane or alcohol recovery systems. Therefore, the manufacturing food waste objectives reflect an immediate dependence on source separation of this material. Residential and commercial food waste, however, is not ordinarily sepa- rated from other materials and would be difficult to recover through recycling techniques. However, the high energy content of this signifi- cant portion of the waste stream lends itself to high-technology mixed waste recovery. Table 6 indicates that about 56 to 75 percent of the Region's waste should be handled by high-technology systems by the year 2000. Most of the sig- nificant facilities should be on line and fully operational by 1990. Fig- ure 2 represents a summary of the waste separation and resource recovery objectives. Although the values were based on objectives for specific materials as shown in Tables 5 and 6, the total waste stream impact of these two strategy categories were summarized in Figure 2 to illustrate the priority of abatement strategies. The objectives for waste separa- tion, 12 to 16 percent, were established first and then the balance (up to about 90 percent) was allocated to resource recovery systems (56 to 75 per- cent). This results in a range of unprocessed waste being landfilled of about nine to 32 percent of the net waste stream by the year 2000. Table 7 summarizes these projections, along with the other two strategy categories: waste reduction and source separation. It is evident that, at this time, without any new legislative actions, waste reduction will play only a minor role in the total regional management system. Nonetheless, the mulching of grass clippings and public education strategies are still important and deserve careful consideration and planning. This is espe- cially true since public participation and awareness will be essential for many of the source separation strategies and important for the general acceptance of high-technology system costs. Waste processing (shredding and baling) may play a significant role during the interim period before high-technology development. If 30 percent of our Region's landfill capacity were used in combination with shredding and' balin~ equipment, it is reasonable to project up to an 18-percent total impact by the year 1985, assuming a 60-percent volume reduction. It may be reasonable to project that these landfill shredders could be replaced by shredding equipment at the centralized resource recovery facilities by the year 1990. An ideal,'comprehensive system for solid waste management should include elements of all four abatement categories. However, even under an ideal system, there will always be some remaining residue that cannot be recov- ered and must be landfilled. It is also important to note that, although these systems can complement each other, they may sometimes compete for the same materials. For instance, paper can be either recycled into new paper, burned for its energy content, or shredded and composted with other organics. Therefore, management decisions concerning these various strate- gies should consider the best use of the materials and efficiencies of the entire system. If facility planning includes careful examination of alter- native recovery systems, over-design and cost overruns can be avoided through comprehensive management plans that include all feasible strategies.