Parsing Charlestown’s recycling rate

“Statistics are like captured spies – torture them enough and they’ll tell you anything”

By Will Collette

Recently, the state Resource Recovery Corporation issued new town-by-town data on municipal recycling that had Charlestown looking good in the eyes of the state. 

Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz gave a glowing report of this to the Town Council in his April Report.

Stankiewicz reported that, according to this new data, Charlestown had a 33.6% recycling rate, putting it in 5^th position statewide. That’s a far cry from my own reporting that shows Charlestown in last place for the past two years for reimbursements for the tonnage of recyclable material Charlestown sends to the state Materials Recycling Facility. In those reports, I noted that most Rhode Island towns smaller than Charlestown sent more tonnage of recyclable material to Johnston than Charlestown did.

So this new data seems like pretty good news, right? The problem with these new data is that they account for only a tiny fraction of Charlestown’s total municipal waste and here’s the truth that is not being told.

Though Charlestown has over 6,100 waste-generating properties, the town has issued only 1,156 permit stickers that allow residents to take their waste to the town transfer station. Charlestown allows residents to buy two $20 annual stickers per households for convenience, but Charlestown DPW Director Alan Arsenault told me in an e-mail that he doesn’t know how many households do that.

So let’s round that number down to 1,000 homes with trash stickers to account for the unknown number of two-sticker households.

According to Tax Assessor Ken Swain’s new grand list calculations, Charlestown has roughly:

• 5,885 residential households (some are in multi-family units), including year-round and seasonal, condos and trailers. 
• Approximately 170 businesses, including farms. 
• Another 128 properties that are tax-exempt because they are federal, state or local government, non-profits or churches.

That’s a total of 6,183 properties and households that generate waste all or part of the year. But in fairness, let’s round that figure down to 6,000 since some properties might be vacant.

Out of 6,000 waste-generating Charlestown properties, only 1,000 – one in six – has a sticker to take waste to the Charlestown transfer station where it enters the waste stream that is tallied by the state.

What happens to the waste of the 5,000 properties and residents without Charlestown stickers? I asked DPW Director Arsenault that question and here is his answer:

It is my understanding that State law mandates that all Municipal Solid Waste generated in the State must be delivered to a State licensed facility. State law also mandates that recyclables be separated and delivered to a State licensed facility, my office has no confirmation on the destination or weight for privately hauled waste and/ or recyclables.

I’m not blaming Arsenault for not knowing where the waste of 83% of all Charlestown’s property owners and residents goes. All he is in a position to know for sure is that it doesn’t go to the transfer station.

We don’t even know how much total waste Charlestown actually generates. EPA estimates that each American (man, woman and child) generates roughly one ton of garbage a year. But for Charlestown, it’s not as simple as multiplying our permanent population of 7,876 by one ton when this doesn’t take into account that for much of the year, our population is swelled by visitors, day-trippers and seasonal residents alike. Tally in all the trash from Charlestown events. Do we generate only 7,856 tons? Or is it 10,000 tons? 20,000 tons? 30,000 tons? More? We just don’t know.

What we do know is that for the fiscal year that ended last September 30, the state paid Charlestown for recycling only 341 tons. Not to challenge Mark Stankiewicz on his report (he was only citing the state’s numbers), but there’s no way that we have a recycling rate of 33.6% when we only recycled 341 tons. Maybe 3% or less at best, but 33.6% is pure, 100% recyclable bullshit.

If you look at Charlestown’s rules and regulations for waste disposal, Charlestown deliberately restricts the use of the transfer station. As Arsenault explained in his e-mail to me:

The CRCC was originally designed and built as a Residential Collection Center with full respect to its’ location in a Residential neighborhood, served by narrow sinuous local roads. Use as a full transfer station would have introduced significant traffic by large waste trucks, and this location was not deemed suitable for high throughput.

Thus, Charlestown’s 300 businesses, non-profits and governmental agencies must handle their waste on their own, usually by hiring a private hauler. Lots of homeowners (me included) also hire private haulers.

However, those private haulers are barred from using the town transfer station because of the problem of running heavily-loaded trucks on narrow roads in a residential neighborhood – a concern that doesn’t seem to apply to quarry trucks, if you’ll allow a slight tangent.

I was especially interested in the waste disposal habits of our part-time residents. I asked if they too were eligible to buy one or two town permit stickers. Arsenault replied:

Yes. Two ID stickers per address or household…”Resident” is defined as “Anyone residing in the Town of Charlestown for any period of time that generates waste for which the Town of Charlestown accepts responsibility.”

In 1986, Arsenault tried to get Charlestown exempted from mandatory recycling because
"the vacationing public will be less likely to participate"

So there isn’t any excuse for our summer residents to consider the roadsides or trash barrels at Cumby as their designated waste disposal sites.

Finally, I asked Arsenault for a clarification about the recycling rules and their relationship to whether a resident has a town permit sticker.

If you want to dispose of electronic waste (old computers, TV sets, modems, phones, answering machines, etc.) you can bring them to the town transfer station without a permit sticker.

However, if you want to drop off other recyclables – paper, plastic, glass, etc. – you must have a permit sticker. 

Arsenault told me: “a sticker is required to help pay for the hauling costs to transport recycling to RIRRC facilities, even though the tipping fee is waived.”

However, part of that hauling fee is offset by the state’s payments to the town for each ton of recycled material. The payment rate is market-driven, so we can’t know for sure that the payments will offset the transport cost, but as it is, the recyclables of 83% of Charlestown homes and businesses don’t go through the Charlestown system. 

Maybe it would make sense for Charlestown to focus its annual subsidy of the CRCC on boosting recycling by allowing all recyclables in, with or without a sticker.

Charlestown has no provisions – with or without a sticker – for food waste, other than throwing it in the trash. 

That’s not only unfortunate, but also ironic, since Charlestown happens to be home to the state’s only large-scale commercial composting operation, Earth Care Farms, which would be a great way for Charlestown to divert tons of garbage from the state’s Central Landfill to rich compost for gardens and farmlands.

Charlestown would have to meet Earth Care’s stringent quality standards for their top-grade, organic compost, but it would be a win-win for the town and for a growing local business to give it our best effort.

Plus, there’s the TGIF program that was started in neighboring Westerly by high school kids which has grown and branched out to provide a way to reclaim waste cooking oil for biodiesel.

Why Charlestown doesn’t use these practical alternatives or do more to reduce waste is a worthy political question for our Charlestown Citizens Alliance-controlled town government. 

But then, in the CCA Party’s eyes, “environment” only means open space. Maybe they don’t want to get their hands dirty by taking action on the town’s garbage.