What Happened?
Communities across the country are re-examining their waste department practices to find opportunities for significant savings and improvements to efficiency.
Loveland
Loveland, Colorado, recently swapped out six of its 16 garbage trucks for hydraulic hybrid vehicles. The new hydraulic drive system is designed to cut fuel consumption by 50 percent, which translates to more than $15,000 in savings per truck each year. The new trucks will reduce 48 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each annually, which is equivalent to removing 15 passenger cars from the road.
Furthermore, the hydraulic system on the new garbage trucks is predicted to cost about one-tenth for maintenance on brakes compared to what the city currently pays for brake system replacement. This is key, as garbage trucks wear down their brakes systems quickly when making up to 1,000 stops and starts along daily routes.
Bridgeport Coalition
A coalition of towns near Bridgeport, Connecticut, recently entered into a new contract with a trash-energy plant that will dispose of the cities’ garbage. The plant collects waste from each municipality and converts it into energy, which it can sell to the municipalities at low rates. Currently, the trash-to-energy plant converts 2,250 tons of waste into 67,000 kilowatts of electricity on a daily basis, CT Post reported.
Originally, the cities had to pay a fee to the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority, which communicated with the plant. Now the municipalities deal directly with the Wheelabrator plant and pay fees of $59.75 per ton of waste disposed, down from $65.12 per ton. The savings estimated from the new contract range from $1.4 million in Trumbull over the next 10 years, to $4.3 million in Bridgeport for the same time period, CT Post reported.
Privatization
Both Detroit and Toronto have recently entered into privatization agreements for the management of their solid waste and recycling programs. In Toronto, the city has more than half of its trash collection services under private management, and reported a total of $11.5 million in first-year savings alone, Waste 360 reported.
In Detroit, two different private companies have split the trash collection contract with the city. Detroit is projected to save $6 million annually in reduced employee and maintenance costs, Waste 360 reported.
Sludge is Gold
A recent report from the Arizona State University revealed everyday sludge contains significant amounts of valuable metals that may be worth millions if properly extracted from the source.
The researchers collected and analyzed samples of sludge from cities across the country to measure the metal content using a mass spectrometer. The findings of the study showed there may be $13 million in valuable metals in sludge for every one million-person city, $2.6 million of which is gold and silver deposits.
Because disposing of sludge containing toxic materials can be costly, some communities may benefit from extracting these minerals while treating the sludge. In Suwa, Japan, a treatment plan is collecting nearly 2 kilograms of gold in every metric ton of ash from burning sludge, Science Magazine reported.
Smart Trash
Gov1 has reported on a variety of trash-related trends including privatization agreements and the conversion of waste into energy.