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In response to questions from our members, NRRA reviewed the available information about when solid waste operators can expect to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, and how to handle disposal of any vaccine waste received at transfer stations. Availability of COVID-19 Vaccine for Solid Waste Operators The availability of the COVID-19 vaccine for solid waste operators varies by state. In New Hampshire and Vermont, the vaccine distribution plans do not provide a specific category for solid waste operators. Instead, solid waste operators will have access to the vaccine depending primarily on age and medical vulnerability based on a range of...

Shannon Choquette , Outreach Coordinator of NRRA municipal member Northeast Kingdom Waste Management District in Vermont, spoke with NRRA recently about their successful food scraps composting program . In addition to managing solid waste and recycling, they assist in collecting totes of food scraps from 23 Vermont communities , and then sending those scraps to farms to be composted. The goal is to reduce tonnage going to Vermont’s landfill. Some of these community-to-farm partnerships go back to 2007, when the district started a pilot project to offer food scrap collection at recycling centers, providing an easy drop-off location...

A NH-based company recently reached out to NRRA looking for ways to reduce their production carbon footprint and make better choices in packaging. Headquartered in Peterborough, NH, SoClean was originally known for its sleep equipment maintenance device and now sells indoor air purifiers and device disinfectors. NRRA's Education Manager, Heather Herring, virtually presented to members of the SoClean team including distribution center, operations, and marketing staff. She reviewed where NH garbage goes, the current recycling markets, and the basics of extended producer responsibility. Then she fielded questions on how to better...

A good crowd of well-wishers attended NRRA's monthly MOM meeting virtually to listen to Dennis Patnoe present about the history of Lancaster, NH's Transfer Station. Several volunteered their words of thanks and congratulations upon his retirement as the Station Supervisor at the end of this month. Dennis was awarded NRRA's highest honor of the Sam Izzo "Recycler of the Year" Award in 1994 and has served on NRRA's board of trustees for 18 years. Lancaster, NH's station began in 1942 next to the town burn dump and transitioned into a landfill in the 1960s. Dennis remembers that he heard there was an opening at the station in 1997and...

By Annie Ropeik, NHPR Reporter The region’s recyclers are encouraging towns to cut costs during the economic downturn of COVID-19 by trying new ways of reusing their glass. Reagan Bissonnette is executive director of the nonprofit Northeast Resource Recovery Association. She says it’s been a couple of years since the sudden closure of the region’s main facility, in Massachusetts, that recycled glass bottles and jars. Since then, she says more towns have been sending their glass to landfills, adding weight and expense to their trash hauling costs even during the economic strain of the pandemic. Bissonnette wants more towns to take...

Put Your Food to Work! With the cost of garbage going up, up, up, what is one of the best ways to keep the weight out of your waste and help your town recycling facility? It turns out for every five bags of groceries you buy, the equivalent of two of them gets thrown out because 40% of food is wasted all along the food supply chain ( USDA). In a waste audit at Fuller School in Keene, 62% of the weight of their trash was food scraps (NRRA). The City of Keene approached the Northeast Resource Recovery Association (NRRA) because the City is interested in how to decrease tonnage sent to the landfill and educate the public on the value...

The Northeast Resource Recovery Association (NRRA) has announced the recipients of its 2019-2020 School Recycling Club Awards. The award winners are: School Recycler of the Year Award - Maple Street Elementary School, Contoocook, NH Teacher Recycler of the Year Award - Chris Asbell, Somersworth Middle School, Somersworth, NH Student Recyclers of the Year Award - Girl Scout Troop 11305, Fuller Elementary School, Keene, NH NRRA's School Recycling Club (the Club) is a program for all schools in New England (and beyond). Designed for students and teachers in grades K-12, the Club enables schools to become more active in the world of...

It certainly was the year for residents to clean out their garages, basements, and cabinets! NRRA coordinated 17 Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) Events in 2020. Member communities offered them from April to November and nearly 18,000 gallons of HHW was collected from NH residents in total. The photo shows examples of what was collected at a Warner, NH event. Most events occurred on a Saturday morning from 8am - noon but some were held on Sundays. Notes from 2020 events that were highlighted this year: More HHW material was collected than normal as residents were thoroughly cleaning out their homes. Our HHW vendor required residents...

We’ve added a new section to our resource library on our website! Information Sheets are a collection of valuable company recommendations for transfer station equipment/products and services, as well as instructions to commonly asked questions related to recycling - all sorted by topic. Do you need to be pointed in the right direction to recycle clothing? Take a look at the information sheet on Textile Recycling. Do you need guidance on safely recycling a microwave? Is your organization researching vendors to order recycling bins from? Scroll through the information sheets in our library that we’ve added so far, or perform a search...

NRRA participated in the NH Municipal Association's virtual conference on "Resilience" from November 18 to 20 with NRRA staff both presenting and staffing a virtual exhibitor booth. NRRA Executive Director Reagan Bissonnette and Member Services Manager Bonnie Bethune presented "Recycling in NH: Keeping it Financially Sustainable and Safe." They were joined by nearly 50 attendees to discuss the economics of the current recycling markets and impacts from COVID-19. Attendees learned how to make their recycling operations more financially sustainable and discussed concrete steps municipalities can take to continue recycling safely...