Latest News
Press Release: NRRA turns attention to C&D Debris, an often-overlooked contributor to landfill waste
Contact: Reagan Bissonnette Executive Director Phone: (603) 736-4401 ext. 116 rbissonnette@nrrarecycles.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 3, 2023
NRRA turns attention to Construction and Demolition Debris, an often-overlooked contributor to landfill waste!
EPSOM, NH: The Northeast Resource Recovery Association (NRRA), the largest and oldest cooperative-model recycling nonprofit in the United States, enables communities to manage their own recycling programs, in part, through its recycling education and technical assistance work. With support from the EPA Region 1, New England, 2022 Healthy Communities Grant Program, NRRA has begun work on its Increasing C&D Diversion in Coös County, NH project.
Organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) have recently increased grant support for programs aimed at reducing food waste, which...Read more
In 2022, the NRRA Board of Trustees elected to establish a Member Benefits & Dues Working Group to reassess the benefits, dues, and structure of the NRRA membership and determine what updates may be needed for NRRA's membership dues and benefits, and make recommendations for the full board to consider. The board voted to increase membership dues overall by 9%. NRRA membership dues had not been increased since 2015.
NRRA is the oldest and largest cooperative-model recycling nonprofit in the United States, partnering with over 450 municipalities, businesses, and individuals throughout New England to make recycling strong through economic and environmentally sound solutions. In particular, NRRA supports many small, rural communities in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts. NRRA is one of only a handful of nonprofits in the country that enables communities to manage their own recycling programs by connecting them with end markets for recyclables. Founded in 1981,...Read more
The report focuses on nine priorities - or Focus Areas - for the upcoming year, as well as recommendations to adopt legislation to advance the Focus Areas listed below.
Focus Areas:SHORT-TERM IMPLEMENTATION PLAN: The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (NHDES) plans to develop annual short-term implementation plans to prioritize actions, measure progress, and track timeframes for completion of the Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP) goals and priorities .
The SWWG looks forward to providing input to NHDES on the development of its first short-term implementation plan.
WASTE CHARACTERIZATION & GENERATION STUDIES: The completion of waste characterization and generation studies are foundational to many other actions...Read more
New Hampshire is known for the political engagement of its residents, with a first-in-the-nation Primary and the third-largest legislative body in the world - the New Hampshire House of Representatives boasting 400 members! This means that every-other year New Hampshire roadways fill with corrugated plastic signs sharing all political affiliations. (Even Bigfoot got in on the action this year!)
But what happens to all that plastic after the election is over?First, those corrugated plastic signs are Coroplast®. On the Coroplast® website , it states:
"Coroplast® uses polypropylene copolymers which makes for easy recycling at the end of their useful life. Polypropylene, being a polyolefin, recycles in processing streams such as plastic milk cartons and detergent bottles. Contact your local plastics recycling center for local information on polypropylene recycling."
This is confusing! Polypropylene is denoted by the recycling symbol and the...Read more
As a recycling nonprofit that helps municipalities manage their own recycling programs, the Northeast Resource Recovery Association (“NRRA”) values conserving both natural and financial resources. Thanks to a $7,434 grant from the Madelaine G. von Weber Trust, NRRA was able to do just that at its headquarters.
The grant allowed NRRA to work with Prism Energy Services to replace all the interior and exterior fluorescent and incandescent lights at NRRA’s office building in Epsom, New Hampshire with LED lights. The existing light fixtures were retrofitted to handle the new LED lights, which reduced waste. And of course, in light of NRRA’s recycling mission, the replaced lightbulbs were responsibly recycled.
“This grant allowed NRRA to both reduce our annual electricity costs and also reduce our carbon footprint,” said Reagan Bissonnette, NRRA Executive Director. “We are grateful that the Madelaine G. von Weber Trust was willing to...Read more
The NRRA Board of Trustees and staff would like to recognize and thank Dennis Patnoe and Paul Tomasi for their service to the Board. Dennis and Paul recently retired after completing their final terms on the Board.
Dennis Patnoe served on the Board of Trustees for 20 years, though Dennis credits his initial involvement with NRRA to a former Littleton operator who asked him along to a MOM meeting because he wanted Dennis to drive! Since that fateful first meeting, Dennis has been a steady presence on the NRRA Board and a strong supporter of Pay As You Throw programs, after helping to shepard his hometown of Lancaster, NH through to a unanimous vote to adopt their own PAYT program in 1999. He retired in December 2020 after being the Lancaster Transfer Station Supervisor for more than 15 years. In recognition of his service to...Read more
We are excited to announce that Ben Hoy - Manager of the Walpole Recycling Center, Director of the Alstead-Langson Transfer Station, and NRRA Board Member - has joined the New Hampshire Solid Waste Working Group (SWWG) . Ben was nominated by the NH Municipal Association as the representative for rural communities that source separate recycling.
The Solid Waste Working Group's responsibilities include reviewing and making changes to the state's solid waste reduction, recycling, and management policies, programs, goals, and initiatives. This includes the latest NH Solid Waste Management Plan, which was released earlier this fall . The SWWG will be issuing its initial report at the end of November.
Ben replaces Brian Patnoe who recently stepped down as the Transfer Station Manager of Lancaster - and represented rural source separated communities on the SWWG - to join NRRA as the Member...Read more
The following article was written by NRRA Communications Manager, Andrea Folsom, and first appeared in the October 2022 issue of Resource Recycling.
How do we get folks to stop tossing trash and contaminating our recycling loads? How can we get more of our residents to recycle? These two questions have been answered over the years by large outreach campaigns designed for cities and towns that use zero-sort or single-stream recycling. Unfortunately, it’s been rare to see such a campaign created for communities that use source-separated recycling – in these systems, residents are asked to separate their recyclables into two or more streams.In August 2021, the nonprofit Northeast Resource Recovery Association (NRRA) was awarded a grant by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Utilities Service to launch a “Recycle Right” campaign aimed at helping small, rural New Hampshire towns that have...Read more
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released new recycling grant opportunities funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Through the Recycling Education and Outreach grant program, towns and cities can apply for grants between $250,000 and $2 million to improve consumer education and outreach on waste prevention, reuse, recycling, and composting. Through the Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling grant program, towns and cities can apply for grants between $500,000 and $4 million to improve materials management and infrastructure for recycling and composting. Applications for both programs are due January 16, 2023. The estimated start date for projects awarded grants is October 2023, and all project activities must be completed within three years. Learn more about these grant opportunities and how NRRA member communities can apply.
Recycling Education and Outreach...Read more
EPSOM, NH: The Northeast Resource Recovery Association (NRRA), the largest and oldest cooperative-model recycling nonprofit in the United States, enables communities to manage their own recycling programs, in part, through its recycling education and technical assistance work.
This fall, NRRA successfully wrapped up its Recycling with Results projects and immediately began the new Recycling Tools of the Trade project, both which were made possible by a grant from the Rural Utilities Service, United States Department of Agriculture.
The Recycling with Results project included the popular four-month-long digital Recycle Right Campaign that reached over 74,000 residents with helpful and accessible recycling education designed to be easily shared. The 70-plus posts and videos in the NRRA campaign show that it is now easier than ever for communities big and small to share the tips, tricks, and education needed to recycle more, recycle better, and Recycle Right....Read more