Latest News

New Hampshire the Beautiful board members John Dumais, Larry Melanson, and Scott Schaier joined Gilford's Public Works Director, Meghan Theriault, and staff, Bruce Hewitt, Bob Martin, and Cordell Summers, as well as NRRA's Executive Director, Reagan Bissonnette, in presenting a check from NH the Beautiful's equipment grant program for $5,000 to Gilford which was used to assist the town with the purchase of a horizontal baler. This equipment has been an essential part of Gilford's new recycling building- switching from single stream back to source separated recycling. Congratulations, Gilford, and thank you for helping to help keep...

Have you joined our email listserv yet? The listserv is a way for members to send an email to one email address and reach all of the NRRA members in the listserv group. Currently over 80 members have signed up. All voting municipal members of NRRA are invited to join. Here are some examples of popular recent discussion topics on the NRRA listserv: Sharing wage information and hours for transfer station staff Charges for demo/bulk material and how members handle private contractors Status of swap shops re-opening Systems for collecting fees, such as cash, check, credit cards, and online invoicing No picking policies Brush grinding...

NRRA wants to recognize schools and their dedicated staff and students for continuing their recycling efforts despite the challenges presented by the pandemic. We are happy to announce that we will be accepting nominations for our School Recycling Awards for the 2019-2020 school year. Please use the Nomination Form to complete and submit your nominees for school, student, teacher or staff recycling awards. The deadline is November 20, 2020. Selections will be made and the awards will be presented virtually during the holidays. In addition, New Hampshire the Beautiful will be accepting essays for consideration to receive their School...

On Friday, October 2, 2020 from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm, over 70 people attended the 7th Annual virtual "Talking Trash in Northern New England" event co-chaired by NRRA in partnership with EBC, SWANA, NWRA, and ecomaine. The Commissioners from the environmental protection agencies in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont presented, along with staff from the Environmental Protection Agency Region One. They updated attendees on the state of the solid waste industry and discussed their state and federal-level waste generation and recycling challenges and opportunities. PFAS was one common topic all speakers identified as a challenge and...

How can you get the best price for your recyclables in the marketplace? By keeping them out of the rain and snow and by expanding your storage, of course! NRRA has worked with Page Street Leasing, LLC since 2003 to provide 10', 20', and 40' containers and trailers to our members through our cooperative purchasing program. They sell used overseas shipping containers, which are rain-tight with solid floors, ideal for storage of recyclables or food scraps for composting at your facility. Carmine Sarno, who works at their Candia, NH office, was recently helpful to one of our members from Vermont. They purchased a used container through...

NRRA's Finance Manager, Paula Dow, recently celebrated her 30th Anniversary of working here at NRRA. Paula has worn many hats in her years here at NRRA. Even once, acting as NRRA's interim Executive Director. This organization and our members are extremely fortunate to have Paula among our ranks. Former NRRA Board Member Susy Mansfield said it best when she said that "Paula is the NRRA's memory, chief organizer, our calm and steady point person." We dug deep into the NRRA archives to find some pictures of Paula through the years and many past and present NRRA staff members and trustees sent in videos and words of accolades to...

Keene, NH asked NRRA to research two food scrap composting systems in order to reduce the weight that is going into MSW (Municipal Solid Waste). Heather Herring created a video to show how she set up a Subpod composting system using worms in her yard to test the ease of setup, use, and amount of material she can keep out of the landfill. NRRA would love to work with organizations, schools, or restaurants in the Keene area using food scrap composting systems. Stay tuned for more as this project continues and for more videos!

Heather Herring, Education Manager of NRRA, joined the Strafford Regional Planning Commission meeting to discuss current issues with recycling, solid waste, and composting with their members in New Hampshire. SRPC's focus for this meeting was on finding ways communities could band together to share resources, define what regional recycling/composting looks like, increase the revenue for recycling, and avoid hauling costs if necessary. SRPC has 18 member municipalities in Southeastern New Hampshire and other invited guests included Mark Richardson, SRPC Commissioner and retired Transfer Station Manager from Hampton, NH, and Jen Czysz...

Welcome back, MOM meetings! Members drove their trucks up, up, up and around the capped Manchester, NH landfill to meet in person for the first time since March due to COVID-19. We had the best view and the best September weather on top to catch up on NRRA news and discuss items! Later in the afternoon, Reagan, Heather, and Bonnie also held a remote version of the MOM agenda for members who could not make it in person. We reviewed the latest in cooperative marketing and purchasing, especially the challenge with marketing #1 PET plastics; summarized the success of the Summer Webinar Series and other items in our Resource Library...