Charlestown down in the dumps

For second year in a row, Charlestown comes in dead last for recycling

By Will Collette

At the end of every fiscal year, the RI Resource Recovery Corporation distributes the profits to the 39 RI cities and towns from its sale of recycled materials . Each town’s share is based on how much they recycled.

Predictably, the large cities received the most money, with Warwick topping the list for 2012.

But coming in at sixth place was the joint effort of Westerly-Hopkinton, proving that you don’t have to be a big city to recycle on a large scale (3,739 tons) and reap the profits.

Coming in dead last – again – was Charlestown. With only 341 tons of recycled material (3% less than the year before), Charlestown’s share of the profits was only $2,647.

Some of our part-time residents recycle by donating their trash
to local businesses

Charlestown’s total recyclables collection dropped 11 tons from last year (for 2011 collections) when we also finished last. The year before, for 2010 collections, we were next to last, behind West Greenwich, which has since substantially improved its recycling.

While Charlestown’s recycling efforts fall each year, the rest of the state improves, up by 5% statewide in the past year alone.

Some readers may be thinking that it’s unfair to compare Charlestown to the rest of the state because our population is so small.

It's true that Charlestown has a small population, However, out of Rhode Island's 39 cities and towns, seven are smaller than Charlestown and all of them do much better than Charlestown both in gross tonnage and in the rate of recycling per person.

Indeed, when you adjust for population to arrive at how much each town recycles per person, Charlestown’s performance looks even more awful.

This table compares Charlestown to the seven towns in Rhode Island that are smaller than Charlestown.

	Population	Tons recycled	Tons per person	Profits
Charlestown	7,827	341	0.044	$2,647.51
Richmond	7,708	581	0.075	$3,966.17
Exeter	6,425	673	0.105	$5,217.78
West Greenwich	6,135	397	0.065	$3,081.75
Jamestown	5,405	898	0.166	$6,788.11
Foster	4,606	457	0.099	$3,758.26
Little Compton	3,492	560	0.160	$4,235.70
New Shoreham	1,051	584	0.556	$4,412.93

Based on the rate, Block Island recycles almost 13 times as much per person than Charlestown. Even West Greenwich, the town that comes closest to Charlestown in terms of rate of recycling per person, still recycles at an almost 50% higher rate than Charlestown.

Let’s look at it another way: based on this year’s tallies, Charlestown residents only recycled 88 pounds each. I don’t have the exact numbers, but I’ll bet the average Charlestown resident eats more pounds of French fries per year than that.

Compare Charlestown’s 88 pounds to Block Island’s 1,112 pounds recycled per person!

Even though world market prices for recyclable trash dropped over this past year, slashing the state program’s revenues by more than half, the program remains more necessary than ever.

Aside from conserving resources and preventing pollution, it also extends the life of the state’s Central Landfill. When the Johnston dump is finally filled in the next few years, the state will be scrambling for alternatives.

Here is an example of one of Copar investor Phil Armetta's pet projects -
a regional "recycling" plant in Middletown, CT that blew up in 2010,
killing six workers

Such alternatives include shipping the waste out of state at enormous prices or granting a permit to a new waste site such as the three local quarries currently being mined by Copar Quarries, whose principal financial backer has made a lot of money by turning old quarries into regional waste sites.

When the state goes shopping for a new statewide waste disposal site, what better place - from their perspective - than down in our part of the world, which is pretty much the back of beyond to most of our fellow Rhode Islanders up north of the Tower.

When Cathy and I moved to Charlestown eleven years ago, one of the many things we liked was Charlestown’s pride in its environmental record.

But since then, Charlestown’s environmental focus has narrowed dramatically to the point where, outside of open space, it’s hard to see any commitment to environmentalism at all in our community.

Our unwillingness to take action to boost our recycling goes hand in hand with the town’s rejection of green energy, its apathy toward our several abandoned toxic waste dumps and the unwillingness to take effective action against an active polluter like the Copar Quarries. Conservation, however important, is but a small part of the larger environmental picture.

Frankly, I can’t understand why Charlestown doesn't do better on its recycling rate. I know that we are supposed to believe that Charlestown is somehow unique and special and that the laws of nature, physics and economics somehow work differently here.

DiLibero's green initiatives were among the reasons why he was forced
to resign

Before he was pushed out of office, former Town Administrator Bill DiLibero tried to get the Town Council interested in boosting the town’s poor recycling rate – no takers among the Council members since recycling is not on the CCA Party’s agenda. 

So DiLibero tried to get the private haulers who serve many Charlestown households to make sure they credited Charlestown when they delivered their cargoes to the Johnston landfill.

That obviously didn't work very well since many of these private haulers have enough trouble keeping the recyclables from getting mixed in with the rest of the trash, never mind dividing it into municipal jurisdictions. 

It doesn't help that Charlestown doesn't have any homegrown private haulers, at least none that are members of the Chamber of Commerce. It also doesn't help that we don't allow haulers who pick up Charlestown trash to take it to Charlestown's facility. Is it any wonder they aren't that motivated to credit Charlestown when they have to take recyclables up to Johnston. 

Also, most local haulers come out of Westerly which may account, in part, for some of their impressive recycling numbers.

When the state first adopted mandatory recycling statewide, Charlestown tried to get itself exempted. In letters written by then (and present) Charlestown Public Works Director Alan Arsenault, Charlestown sought an exemption from the law. Instead, the town wanted to expand the use of its unlined and poorly monitored landfill operations along Narrow Lane and Old Coach Road.

As Arsenault wrote to the RI Department of Environmental Management on October 3, 1986:

“The vacationing public will be less likely to participate in any recycling program for several reasons….many individuals feel freed of normally responsible behavior – vacation mentality….There is no incentive for these people to recycle….[and] there are limited penalties which can be brought to bear on the tourists.”

However, Charlestown is hardly unique for having a high number of summer visitors or having a lot of private haulers. Our coastline neighbors and Block Island all have the same issues, yet they do so much better than we do. And without the whining.

Another common form of Charlestown recycling

Part of the problem is that we strictly restrict access to the town’s transfer station as if it was a high-security installation. But the results are predictable. 

Instead of trash being sorted and separated for recycling where we would recover some of the costs, it goes by the roadside. Or it ends up in the trash barrels at local merchants. Or it goes somewhere else, who knows where.

Charlestown is supposed to spend the $2,647 it is getting from the RIRRC to boost recycling efforts Charlestown. There’s not much you can do with $2,647.

Maybe the town should use the money to get a bunch of imprinted garbage bags to leave at each summer home with the inscription reading, “When full, please dispose of in Westerly.”

Here is the complete listing of Rhode Island cities and towns, ranked by their profits from 2012 recycling efforts:

1.                   Warwick: $79,594.13

2.                   Providence: $71,347.62

3.                   Cranston: $57,087.48

4.                   East Providence: $37,781.85

5.                   Pawtucket: $37.277.52

6.                   Westerly-Hopkinton: $29,049.23

7.                   Coventry: $28,599.29

8.                   Cumberland: $24,881.60

9.                   South Kingstown: $24,241.34

10.                North Kingstown: $23,957.94

11.                Woonsocket: $21,070.66

12.                North Providence: $20,544.35

13.                West Warwick: $18,433.33

14.                Newport: $17,356.93

15.                Barrington: $17,808.65

16.                Johnston: $16,107.02

17.                Smithfield: $15,998.25

18.                Lincoln: $15,652.42

19.                Tiverton: $15,374.27

20.                Portsmouth: $14,969.31

21.                Bristol: $13,366.75

22.                Burrillville: $13,267.45

23.                East Greenwich: $13,235.90

24.                Middletown: $12,434.62

25.                North Smithfield: $10,619.86

26.                Warren: $9,299.49

27.                Glocester: $9,216.12

28.                Narragansett: $8,965.98

29.                Scituate: $8,403.11

30.                Central Falls: $8,075.31

31.                Jamestown: $6,788.11

32.                Exeter: $5,217.78

33.                New Shoreham: $4,412.93

34.                Little Compton: $4,235.70

35.                Richmond: $3,966.17

36.                Foster: $3,758.26

37.                West Greenwich: $3,081.75

38.                Charlestown: $2,647.51