Montgomery County’s new environmental protection director says the county doesn’t have enough capacity to handle the daily amount of recycled waste and must spend almost $1 million a year to ship materials to a processing center in York, Pennsylvania.
Environmental Director Adam Ortiz said during a hearing of the County Council’s Transportation and Environment Committee Thursday that the Shady Grove Transfer Station and Processing Center, where the county’s recycling center is located, doesn’t have enough capacity to meet the county’s needs.
“Part of it is infrastructure. The other is that there is more material that people are dealing with,” he said.
Division of Solid Waste Services Chief Willie Wainer said the Shady Grove facility can process 8 tons of waste per hour, and between 60 and 65 tons per day. But the county is receiving twice that amount of waste, and must contract with the garbage collection service Penn Waste to take the materials. Deputy environmental director Patty Bubar said the county sends between 14,000 and 16,000 tons of recycled waste per year to the Pennsylvania facility, at a cost of $65 per ton.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Dan Schere over at Bethesda Magazine