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Board Meeting Presentation: AbiBow Paper Retriever
Mike Ames,
AbiBow LLC Recycling, (also known as Paper
Retriever). Parent Company AbitibiBowater is
newsprint manufacturer based in Houston, emerged from bankruptcy
in December.
Paper
Retriever was formed18 years ago to feed mills. Have an
EcoRewards cash back program based on volume of paper
collected at each location.
Have
additional EcoBin system for mixed recyclables. Provide
many sizes and types of containers, compactors. Do collection
contracts with businesses/schools for clean mixed paper,
cardboard; accept plastic bottles and cans in clear bags (no
glass). Usually most material is cardboard, which is
lightweight. Some of their mills now make cardboard. Charge
for rental of mixed recycling containers, pay back rebate based
on volume. Automated record-keeping with time, location,
weight.
Reporting
meets LEED requirements, includes GGE redux, water savings. New
bin placement includes kickoff event, bilingual education, 90
day follow up. Work with custodial staff.
Will be
hiring new PaperRetriever rep for South Shore soon. There are
over 1000 bins in the Boston metro area (Ply - Shrewsbury -
Nashua). Need 2 tons/month from each bin to sustain program.
Half of paper bins are at schools. Goal is 25% of bin filled by
school, 75% by community. Put shredded paper in clear plastic
bags. Can do plastics, cardboard in back of school (“EcoBin”,
see above).
Questions
arose regarding recent service problems at South Shore schools,
and difficulty getting a response to inquiries and pickup
requests. Mr. Ames acknowledged that they fell behind when they
lost a driver and a truck, combined with the many snowstorms.
The call center is in Texas, all service requests are routed
through Houston via phone or website to the local collection
manager.. Trucks are deployed from Nashua. They are catching up
now, and should be running smoothly again very soon.
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Regional
disposal bid expanded to include SSRC munis
As reported in the last Update,
the five SSRC Tier One towns have been working with 14 Cape
Cod towns on regional long term disposal bid, facilitated by
Cape Cod Commission. Barnstable county is about to issue
Request for Expressions of Interest, due June 1. The REI asks
for disposal, recycling, and/or organics processing proposals,
which may include multiple outlets under one contract at one
price. The plan is to narrow down all options, negotiate with
the vendor(s) that provide the most advantageous options, and
have a contract ready for Town Meeting approvals by Spring
2012. The process is being facilitated by the Cape Cod
Commission, which has retained the services of John Giorgio,
Esq. of Kopelman and Page.
As the process has evolved, it
is now possible for any other interested SSRC municipalities
with similar contract end dates to participate in this
procurement. The contract will start on or around
1/1/2015. Four (non-Tier One) town reps expressed interest at
the February Board meeting, and directed Ms. Sullivan to send
email to all SSRC Town Administrators, Boards of Selectmen,
disposal contract administrator. The aggregate disposed tonnage
of the Cape towns plus our 5 tier One towns is about 200,000
tons/year. Additional SSRC participants could bring the total
up to 250,000-300,000 tons/year, which has the potential to
ensure the most beneficial contract possible, and even enable
the development of more advanced and sustainable disposal
technology in the area.
Please contact me if you would
like to discuss this further. |
SSRC co hosting Legislative breakfast with PCHA
Mark your
calendar for Friday May 20. After a one year hiatus, the SSRC’s
9 Annual Legislative Breakfast will be done in conjunction with
the Plymouth County Highway Association, in which several of our
Board members are active.
The event
will take place at the Radisson Plymouth. More details to come.
HHW Collections run April 9 – June 18
SSRC member towns will hold
6 household hazardous waste
collections
this spring. Plymouth added a summer collection for its
residents on July 30, to serve their many summer residents.
Flyers will be sent to host towns’ Libraries, Town Halls, DPWs
and Transfer Stations in the next couple of weeks.
The SSRC and
The Paint Exchange
will run concurrent Latex Paint Collections in the vicinity of
HHW collections. Details and publicity on those are being
finalized now.
4/9 Weymouth DPW,
120 Winter St. Unwanted medications also taken
4/30 Hanover
Transfer Station, 118 Rockland St. (Rt. 139)
5/7 Kingston Highway Garage,
32 Evergreen St., with
Duxbury
5/21 Hingham,
Plymouth River School, 200 High St.
6/4 Plymouth
DPW, 169 Camelot Dr.*
until 3 pm
6/18 Scituate
Highway Garage, 68 Captain Pierce Rd., with
Cohasset
7/30 Plymouth
DPW, 169 Camelot Dr.* (Plymouth residents
only)
*Plymouth residents w/ >30 gal/60
lbs., bring $20 for each add’l 15 gal /30 lb |
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SSRC featured on Plymouth County Corner
Plymouth
County Treasurer Tom O’Brien interviewed your Executive Director
for an episode of the PAC TV production “Plymouth County
Corner”. When treasurer O’Brien was a State representative, he
sponsored the legislation that created the South Shore Recycling
Cooperative in 1998. Watch
it at
http://blip.tv/file/4722967
Solid Waste Legislation Transition Task Force
The Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) established
this Task Force to help work out the details of implementing
July 2010 changes to the Solid Waste Statute (M.G.L. Chapter
111, Section 150A) that transferred responsibility for
permitting small transfer stations from MassDEP to local Boards
of Health and eliminated the requirement that the agency provide
site suitability reports for site assignment applications.
I have been asked to represent municipalities on this Task Force,
and would like input from the Boards of Health and the
departments in charge of affected SSRC municipal transfer
stations. (Cohasset, Duxbury, Hanover, Hanson, Hingham,
Kingston, Plymouth, and Scituate). I was unable to attend the
first meeting on March 1.
If you have
questions or need additional information about the Task Force,
go to
http://www.mass.gov/dep/public/committee/swtf.htm, or
contact
Laurel Carlson
at 508-946-2764
About the Task Force
List of Task Force Members |
Get some local Bang out of MassRecycle’s Paper Campaign TV promo
Have you seen MassRecycle’s Paper ad on CBS this past month? To
date it has aired on Channel 4 and Channel 38 about 100
times, on shows such as Rachael Ray and the Phantom Gourmet,
PGA, Face the Nation, NCAA and ACC Basketball , WBZ News, The
Office and even the Three Stooges! If you haven’t caught it, you
can see it
here .
The ads will continue to air through the
beginning of April, thanks to a grant from MassDEP and
CBS Community Partnerships.
For 3 weeks, the ads will proclaim that
viewers who take the
Paper Recycling Challenge
can enter to win Sweepstakes prizes provided by CBS. I
hope you all will play!
MassRecycle’s Paper Campaign is also being
featured on the show “What’s in Store” this week
(starring your Executive Director!). If you missed it
Wednesday night at 9:30 on TV38, you can catch it
tomorrow night at 11:30 on Channel 4. The segment will
include footage at the newly renovated Casella Material
Recovery Facility in Charlestown, a commercial paper pickup
and delivery by EL Harvey and Sons, and interviews with
BJ Harvey, Casella’s Lisa McMenemy. It will be posted on the
Mass Recycles Paper website
by early next week.
Your municipality can get more paper out of your
residents’ trash and into the bin by getting some synergy with
these low to no cost action steps:
• Make sure your acceptable paper list on your website matches
http://www.massrecyclespaper.org/paperlist.html.
This list was created after surveying all paper handlers in
Massachusetts thus providing all residents and municipalities a
uniform list of acceptable paper.
• Update transfer station signage, and outreach materials.
• I will issue a press release about the CBS promotion with a
reminder about how easy it is to recycle paper in our
communities, and how much money it could save our towns.
• All but one of our SSRC Selectboards signed “A
Resolution in Support
of the Mass Recycles Paper Campaign”
in 2007. Contact your town leaders to
remind them of this, and let them know about the promotion.
More ideas can be found
here. |
