(Town of Lebanon, NY – Jan. 2, 2014) As Chair of our Solid Waste and Recycling Committee, I am proud to share with you our continuing innovative approach to recycling at our landfill which I believe is a national model to be emulated with our recycling and pill collection efforts, landfill gas to energy project, solar cap at the landfill – the first of any municipal landfill in the country, and our ongoing developing Agricultural and Renewable Energy (ARE) industrial park where we are expecting to have a lumber drying business that uses heat from our landfill gas to energy process and a greenhouse, we are pursuing establishment of a construction debris recycling company, a plastics to oil recycling company that will create a regional ag plastics to oil facility at our landfill and other recycling related initiatives. We also will have a solar leasing project complete this year which will save the landfill $5,000 annually in electric costs and will be a model for other county campuses or municipal offices.
We host regular school tours and business tours of our landfill gas to energy generator, our recycling center and our solar cap. We remain committed to the popular regional transfer stations for those who prefer to transport their garbage and recyclables rather than have a service pick them up.
We recycle clothing textiles, diabetic syringes, all manner of glass, plastic and paper/cardboard including cereal and pizza boxes, and we have an innovative new ag plastic recycling operation. We continue to take TVs, propane tanks, humidifiers, computers and other electronics or can direct people to the places where they can drop off electronics. We have community cleanup programs every spring at no charge to the municipality and we continue to recycle much of our construction debris and compost a number of organic products to ensure we have ample supplies of methane gas for our landfill gas to energy system that generates electricity sales revenue for the county every year as well as providing electricity to our recycling center. We have annual or semi- annual events where residents can recycle toxic materials like paint and pesticides, or recycle large quantities of paper documents for shredding.
Happy New Year.
Jim Goldstein, Lebanon Supervisor