SMETHPORT – You can call her the “Trash Queen” if you want; it
won’t bother her.

Mary J. Williams is serious about trash and its disposal, and
about seeing that as little of is buried in a landfill as possible.
But she is also practical.

The new McKean County recycling coordinator, the first active
coordinator in several years, knows that for any recycling effort
to be really successful, it has to be easy to use and economical,
and that with the exception of Bradford City, that has not been the
case in the county.

While she has spent the first month on the job getting in touch
with as many municipal officials as possible, listening to what
they have to say and letting them know she wants to help, she is
just about ready to begin to address some of the problems the
existing system has.

Number one on that list is to clean up the 17 sites around the
county where the big roll-off bins, some of them badly rusted and
ugly are placed.

“People are more likely to bring recyclables to the roll-offs if
they are more attractive and neat,” she notes. In the past they
have not always been that way, for many reasons, one of which is
that collections were not always prompt or regular, and the bins
overflowed.

That meant that people who brought their paper, tin and plastic
to the already-full bins, either had to take them back home or set
them on the ground alongside the bin.

Setting the stuff on the ground makes a mess and taking it home
again can discourage people from continuing to recycle.

The second thing is that people need to be educated on what can
be recycled, and instructions on the bins need to be more
clear.

As an example, while a bin may be labeled “plastics,” not nearly
all plastic is currently recyclable.

Plastic lawn furniture and swimming pools shouldn’t go in the
bins, as shouldn’t garden hoses and oil containers.

In fact, about the only plastics that should go there are milk
jugs, soda bottles and other containers where the mouth is smaller
than the base.

Aluminum is an easy one – only beverage cans go.

Paper is a bit more complicated – newspapers and magazines are
OK, books are not.

And while there is a need for cardboard, it’s only for
corrugated -ðthe cereal boxes and shiny stuff are no good.

When things like that get into the stream, they have to be
removed manually, and that can make the process uneconomic.

The problem of foreign objects and of mixture of different types
and colors is what has shut off the collection of glass at the
sites.

People often mixed colors of glass, or even worse, put in
ceramics, window glass or bottles with metal caps and rings, all of
which are detrimental to the glass making process and will cause a
whole load to be rejected at the recyclers.

The plastic bags that people bring their materials in are also
always a problem

Williams is working with Rustick LLC, the landfill owner, to
solve the problem and a pilot project should be under way in Kane
before the end of the year. Volunteers there will man a drop-off
site to help people make certain they only deposit the right
stuff.

RecyclAll in Port Allegany is ready to take all the separated
glass the county can produce; the company is presently importing
glass from as far as 250 miles away.

Besides the ready market for glass, she points out that aluminum
always is marketable, and that waste paper is, by volume, the
country’s leading export.

While effective recycling can reduce costs of hauling and
dumping trash, that is not the only benefit, Williams points
out.

The state would like to see the entire waste stream reduced to
the point that 35 percent is reclaimed and recycled.

In McKean County the rate is presently somewhere between four
and seven percent, so the is plenty of room for improvement .

To encourage that improvement, the Department of Environmental
Protection offers “performance grants,” paying a bonus to
communities in which residents and businesses recycle – last year
Bradford earned $23,924, and even Port Allegany, where the only
effort is a passive one – Boy Scouts have barrels where people drop
off glass – got $236.

The problem is that a municipality has to apply for the grant,
and that means keeping records to show how much was collected.

“Citizens need to recognize that the more they recycle, the
greater the reward,” she explains.

The material does not have to come through a community program,
as a matter of fact, municipalities can get paid for the tonnage
businesses recycle, as long as the tonnage is recorded.

Williams is presently applying for a state grant for a database
program that should make the record keeping easier, especially for
businesses.

As she tries to get a real system of recycling going, Williams
also points out the need for a place to dispose of hazardous
household waste such as old paint and cleaning fluids.

Another need is a system for disposing of sewage sludge without
burying it, perhaps by composting along with lawn, garden and food
waste.

While programs in schools to encourage recycling may come in the
future, at present Williams is concentrating on assessing the needs
of municipalities in everything from advice to equipment.