Landfill says glass recycling is key to building new cell

Several big projects are in the work for the landfill through the Rappahannock Regional Solid Waste Management Board (R-Board) including a new landfill cell, glass recycling program, and wheel wash system.

The R-Board has had an overall drop in revenues for the fiscal year 2020, yet they’re still on-budget since they were ahead of it prior to the coronavirus pandemic taking hold. 

On the commercial side, revenues have dropped 10-15%, but revenues on the residential side have actually gone up around 15%.

“We’re seeing a lot of spring cleaning going on. We’re also seeing kids are home from school, and college kids are home from school, so it’s creating more of the residential type trash,” R-Board Director Joe Buchanan said. 

Multiple projects have had to be put on hold including an expansion at the front gate, an additional truck scale, and a GPS system for a landfill compactor. 

Additionally, the fiscal year 2021 budget has been reduced by about 17% due to uncertainty in revenues. 

The Board was looking into a new bulldozer and excavator, but no new capital equipment purchases will be made next year. 

The R-Board is still continuing with the construction of its new landfill cell, F-3f

This $4.2 million, 7-acre project is set to be completed on-time by the end of 2020. The fiscal year 2020 budget covers $1 million of the project, $2.2 million comes from the R-Board’s short-term investments and cash account, and $1 million will come from the fiscal year 2021 budget. 

The landfill needs to build a new cell every four to five years. The current cell where all the solid waste goes, F-2, is projected to be full by March to June of 2021. 

 The design of the new cell was done several years prior and was approved by the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). 

Everything has to go through a permit process, and there will be tests to make sure that there are no holes in the liners of the cell. 

At the end of the day, workers will cover the waste with either dirt or a tarping system.

The R-Board has increased its use of the tarping system in the past six months as it helps conserve airspace, but weather effects if the tarps can be employed. 

“We want to have odor control, fire control, it’s a safety issue, and it’s a DEQ requirement that your waste is covered at the end of each working day,” Buchanan said. 

The landfill, opened in the early 1990s, is estimated to have around 20 years left in its lifetime. 

Glass recycling may be the key to building a cheaper base for Cell F-3

The R-Board entered into a six-month pilot program that ended in March with the Fairfax Purple Can Club who transform the recycled glass into sand and gravel. 

Through this pilot program, Fairfax hauled the material, but now that it is over, the R-Board has decided to continue hauling the glass to them. 

Gravel is a needed material for the construction of Cell F-3. The glass gravel from Fairfax costs $8 a ton and could be backhauled, while industry range gravel products range from $13 to $18 per ton. 

Right now, glass is in the single-stream mix, and due to its nature can cause a negative draw to the landfill. 

“It’s never been good in the single-stream mix,” Recycling Coordinator Diane Jones said

In order for the glass to be recycled into another piece of glass, it needs to be cleaned immaculately. 

The glass collected through the single-stream mix must go to Tidewater Fiber Corporation who separates it from the other materials, but they can’t get it as clean as it needs to be. It has to be shipped again down to Strategic Materials in North Carolina who charge $34 a ton. 

“The need to move from voluntary separation of glass to not accepting glass in the mixed recyclable collection system is a step that may be necessary going forward,” stated an R-Board memo. 

The glass that’s being shipped up to Fairfax comes from a voluntary glass separation program at Belmont Road. 

The R-Board experimented with this glass separation program from September to December of 2018 from which they received 22 tons of glass. From January to June of 2019, though, they only collected 18 tons of material. 

“We started to do really aggressive outreach because the glass situation in the single stream is just not good” Diane

Then, from July to December of 2019 they saw an uptick of 57 tons of material collected. This year, the program is averaging 16.5 tons a month in the first four months of the year.  

From January to June of this year, they are projected to collect 100 tons, double what was received the previous year. 

The R-Board is also working on a new wheel wash system, expected to be finished in the next 60 days. 

This wheel wash system will wash the tires and undercarriage of the trucks before they leave the landfill. 

The reusable system will cost $200,000.

Water and dirt used to wash the trucks will be captured by the system. A coagulant will separate the water and dirt, putting the dirt back into the landfill and filtering the water so it can be reused to wash the trucks.