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1987—a Big Year for Recycling

March 21, 2017

As previously noted, NERC was founded in 1987, a year which saw a lot of “firsts” in the world of trash.

In March 1987, the Mobro 4000, a barge owned by MOBRO Marine, Inc., set out from Islip, New York. It was carrying 3,168 tons of trash headed for a pilot program in Morehead City, North Carolina, to be turned into methane. The load wound up being rejected by North Carolina. The barge moved down the coast looking for another place to offload its trash. It went as far as Belize and continued to meet with resistance to dumping of its trash. It eventually returned to New York and after a legal battle the trash was at last incinerated in Brooklyn. The resulting ash was buried in Islip.

The Mobro “Trash Barge” became a focal point in the personal histories of many of us who  started our careers in materials management back then.

After new RCRA landfill laws were enacted around the country, nearly 3,000 municipal landfills closed between 1982 and 1987. This sparked concerns that a “landfill crisis” was looming. States began enacting source reduction and recycling laws to promote waste reduction and recycling.

It was against the backdrop of the Mobro trash barge that the New York Department of Conservation (NYDEC) first issued the New York State Solid Waste Management Plan (the “Plan”) in 1987. The Plan called upon the state to reduce waste by 50 percent over the following 10 years.

In Vermont, the 1987 General Assembly enacted Act 78, Vermont's new solid waste management law. The law created a solid waste management program which was to be built “upon a partnership between state and local government.” It put in place a new emphasis on waste reduction and recycling.

And, in New Jersey, mandatory recycling arrived. The following is from Steve Rinaldi, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Energy and Sustainability, in his recent WasteWise Bulletin:

30th Anniversary of NJ Recycling Act Arrives!

Proving that time does indeed fly by, we will soon be celebrating the 30th anniversary of New Jersey’s mandatory recycling law, which was the first mandatory recycling law in the United States and established New Jersey as a national leader in recycling. The law, which was enacted by Governor Tom Kean on April 20, 1987, reshaped how New Jersey residents, businesses and institutions viewed and managed the waste paper, old corrugated cardboard and used bottles and cans that they generated daily. Among other things, the Recycling Act required New Jersey’s twenty-one counties to develop recycling plans that mandated the recycling of at least three designated recyclable materials, in addition to leaves. County recycling plans were also required to designate the strategy to be utilized for the collection, marketing and disposition of designated recyclable materials. Other provisions of the Recycling Act required municipalities to adopt an ordinance based upon their county’s recycling plan.

Initially, the Recycling Act called for the recycling of 15% of the municipal solid waste stream in the first year of the program followed by the recycling of 25% of the municipal solid waste stream thereafter. (That goal was more than doubled through legislation enacted in 1992 (P.L. 1992, c.167), amending the 1987 Recycling Act with a new challenge to recycle 50% of the municipal solid waste stream and 60% of the overall waste stream.)

The impact of the Recycling Act was felt almost immediately as recycling tonnage increased dramatically after the enactment of this legislation. In 1986, 1.1 million tons of material was recycled in New Jersey, while in 1988 that number jumped up to 5.4 million tons. While waste generation also increased during this period, the total tons recycled in New Jersey increased significantly each year as recycling became a way of life in New Jersey.

By Athena Lee Bradley (with appreciation to Steve Rinaldi)

 

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