Recycling in Charlestown flops again

Last place, for the third year in a row

By Will Collette

The state of Rhode Island’s Resource Recovery Center will actually pay us to recycle. In fact, every year at this time, they distribute checks to RhodeIsland municipalities to reflect the profits on selling the amount of waste they deliver to the Johnston landfill’s recycling center.

However, it’s becoming a regular annual story that, like the past two years, Charlestown got the smallest check. Four years ago, the only town to do worse than Charlestown was West Greenwich.

With town leadership dominated by the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) who claim the mantle of environmentalism for their own, why is it that we suck so badly at recycling? We’ll get back to that, but let’s take a closer look at the numbers.

What makes this year different is the new lengths the town, with the help of the RIRRC, has been trying to gloss over its dismal performance. They want you to use a different measure of comparison, rather than the simplest and most obvious by noting that Charlestown’s record is not really so terrible.

If you turn the numbers so that you look at them in a certain light at a certain angle, “You’ll see that Charlestown actually fairs [SIC] extremely well when compared to other communities. It is *this* measure-waste generation-that is important, not a town’s recycling rate, which is dependent on many variables.”

That’s what RIRRC public relations officer Sarah Kite wrote to me in an e-mail. Sure you can. Indeed, you can torture any data to make it tell you just about anything you want. When her agency first issued their “new and improved” way of looking at municipal recycling, it was pretty easy to tear that analysis to shreds, as I did here.

But I like to look at the bottom line – the tonnage of recyclables we collected and the amount we were paid. We actually don’t know how much waste gets generated in Charlestown. Only one out of six waste-generating properties in Charlestown hold permit stickers allowing them to take waste to the Charlestown transfer station.

Five out of every six Charlestown property owners have their waste, including recyclables, picked up by private haulers. 

Private haulers are barred from taking Charlestown waste to the Charlestown transfer station. They must either take it to Westerly or South Kingstown, or schlep it up to Johnston.

So, frankly, because only one-sixth of Charlestown property owners use the transfer station, we just simply don’t know how we are doing in terms of real waste generation or recycling. We do know that for three years running, we have been the worst in the state in terms of tonnage and profit-sharing.

Charlestown expects private haulers who pick up from Charlestown customers to give Charlestown “credit” for the waste even though we won’t let them use our facilities. Most don’t. If you were them, would you?

What are left with are the numbers provided by the state which offer a much simpler and, I believe, a more honest way of looking at Charlestown compared to its peers. They are also the only tangible numbers available.

I look at the actual tonnage and the actual money paid by RIRRC so we can then compare ourselves to towns with similar populations and conditions. For example, there are seven Rhode Island towns with smaller populations than Charlestown. These are Block Island, Exeter, Foster, Jamestown, Little Compton, Richmond and West Greenwich.

All of them use transfer stations and a mix of private haulers. All of them are rural. Most of them have a high percentage of part-time residents, tourists and people who come to local events. All have a fairly low concentration of commercial businesses. Given that they face pretty much the same conditions and challenges as Charlestown, you would reasonably expect their tonnage of recyclables to be smaller than Charlestown.

Except they are not. This past year, Charlestown recycled less than 400 tons. All of the seven smaller towns recycled more than 400 tons. Indeed, except for West Greenwich, all of these smaller towns recycled more than 500 tons. Richmond recycled 802 tons, more than double Charlestown’s with 100 fewer people. Exeter recycled 719 tons with 1,400 fewer people.

Let’s look at Charlestown and the seven towns with smaller populations to see how they did based on the state’s numbers.

	Population	Tons recycled	Tons per person	Comparison to last year
Charlestown	7,827	397	0.05	+16%
West Greenwich	6,135	416	0.07	-5%
Foster	4,606	515	0.11	+13%
Block Island	1,051	567	0.54	-3%
Exeter	6,425	719	0.11	+7%
Richmond	7,708	802	0.1	+38%
Jamestown	5,405	970	0.18	+8%

The US EPA estimates that there is one ton of waste for every man, woman and child. One ton is a nice number to use for comparison. Using EPA’s estimate, you can reasonably expect Charlestown to generate around 8,000 pounds of residential waste, but according to the RIRRC, we recycle 397 tons or around 5%. 

If you look at the chart, Block Island recycles more than half a ton for every person who lives on the island, which is a rate that is ten times higher than Charlestown.

Just to be clear, based on the state’s numbers, Charlestown residents are credited with recycling 0.05 tons of their waste and that amounts to only one hundred pounds.

All of the towns with populations near to or less than Charlestown’s recycle more waste per person than Charlestown. There is little point in expanding the analysis to include other towns, such as those with slightly higher populations. Every city and town recycled more than Charlestown.

So why does Charlestown suck so badly at recycling, despite claims by its leadership that we’re such an environmentally conscious community?

I believe the biggest factor is that same leadership, held by the CCA Party for the past six years. They have an incredibly narrow definition of environmentalism. 

For Platner, it's not about the environment, it's about control - 
evidenced by how quickly she tossed her commitment to open space
to pick a fight with the Water Resource Board to keep THEM from
securing more open space under state control.

I used to think the CCA Party was largely just about obtaining more open space, but even that is called to question due to the CCA Party’s jihad against the Water Resource Board’s effort to secure Charlestown open space to protect water resources.

Now that the devotion of the CCA Party to open space is called into question, I guess they define environmentalism as opposition to anything that any of its members don’t like (e.g. aquaculture, green energy). Maybe they only believe in bicycles.

When former Town Administrator Bill DiLibero flagged Charlestown’s poor recycling performance and his ideas for boosting recycling, the CCA Party majority displays complete disinterest. Under new Town Administrator Mark Stankiewicz, Charlestown ended collection of electronic waste. 

Stankiewicz banned the Charlestown Community Garden from collecting electronic waste at its 2013 Harvest Festival in Ninigret Park saying that activity competed with Charlestown’s own electronic waste collection – which then ended only a few months later.

We make it hard for residents, especially part-time residents, to use the transfer station (click here for Charlestown’s rules, if you think I’m making this up). Even after our storm disasters created tons of rubble, the ever-shifting set of rules confused residents who thought the town was going to help them get rid of all the tree damage but then discovered the hoops the town made them jump through.

Playing with the statistics to try to produce a better outcome does not change the bottom line. Charlestown gets the smallest amount of revenue for its recyclables of any RI municipality and our total effort is pathetic. And our town leaders don’t seem to care.