North Carolina to Ban Recyclables in Landfills
[Creative Commons photo by House of Sims]
Starting October 1st, North Carolinans will no longer be able to dispose of motor oil filters, wooden pallets and plastic bottles in landfills.
- » See also: A Cup of Coffee with a Side Order of Ethanol, Please
- » Get EcoLocalizer by RSS or sign up by email.
Instead, folks are encouraged to recycle these waste items. They’ve even got online resources for starting a recycling program to handle the banned materials. Enforcement will mainly take place at the landfills themselves, and oil filters, pallets and plastic bottles aren’t the only banned items. Landfills also aren’t burying certain organic waste. Instead, according to The Daily Southerner, “county residents and commercial operations can bring yard waste, such as tree limbs, grass clippings and similar debris to the landfill, where it is turned into free yard mulch.”
The program is intended to save space in the state’s landfills, prevent pollution, and help with the state’s recycling efforts. Dee Freeman, secretary of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources said:
We encourage North Carolinians to help these disposal bans succeed by expanding and starting new recycling efforts. Recycling is a proven job creator in North Carolina and if we do our best to recycle the newly banned materials, we will not only grow businesses in the state, but also protect disposal capacity, recover valuable resources, save energy and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Do you know of any other state- or county-wide bans on items that traditionally head to the landfill?
[via Treehugger and The News & Observer]
While this is for the most part, good news, it does have its downsides like the almost complete loss of profitable local markets for wood waste (ground pallets) far too many communities with no means to handle plastic bottles and only 2 companies in the entire state who are fully equipped to handle oil filters in 100% compliance with state and Federal regulations.