A short primer on Barron County "garbology"

“Americans make more trash than anyone else on the planet, throwing away about 7.1 pounds per person per day, 365 days a year. Across a lifetime that rate means, on average, we are each on track to generate 102 tons of trash. Each of our bodies may occupy only one cemetery plot when we’re done with this world, but a single person’s 102-ton trash legacy will require the equivalent of 1,100 graves. Much of that refuse will outlast any grave marker, pharaoh’s pyramid or modern skyscraper: One of the few relics of our civilization guaranteed to be recognizable twenty thousand years from now is the potato chip bag.” 
― Edward Humes, Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash

Thanks, girls, for thinking larger than your playground

Right before school let out for the summer, I received a small delegation of third graders at City Hall. Of their own accord they had collected 169 signatures, mostly of their classmates, affixed to a petition for curb-side recycling in our city. Their main concern is while Chetek has two places where recyclable material can be dropped off (across from the dam and behind Atrium Post-Acute Care [formerly Knapp Haven]) what about those who no longer drive or will not take the time to stop off at one of the drop-off boxes? In their words:

We want to have recycling bins outside our houses in the community of Chetek. We want this because if you don't recycle the world will be destroyed. Only some people can or will drive to the recycling center. So please help us make the City of Chetek a better place.

Before you offer up an obligatory, “Aw, shucks. That's sweet,” for these girls' efforts, let me assure you they mean business. Kids though they may be, they want to make sure everyone in Chetek is recycling. So, I figured the least I could do was put in a call to the Barron County Incinerator and find out if there are any better options out there than what we're already doing. That led to a conversation with Al Zeltner, a Chetek guy who a lot of us know already who, unbeknownst to me, has been the Waste-to-Energy Facility plant manager nearly from its beginning in 1986. 

He suggested I drive out to Almena sometime soon so he could give me the grand tour and right before the end of June I did just that. And for the next three hours I got an education in Barron County “garbology.”

Ever wonder where all our trash goes? By county ordinance everybody's garbage in Barron County, save both the city and township of Rice Lake, comes to Al and the crew out there. The Waste-to-Energy Facility has, essentially, two “different” components to its plant – the incinerator side of the facility and the recyclables.

Let's talk garbage first as in Garbage-In. In layman's terms, it basically works like this:

Pick up day is Tuesday
in our neighborhood

• The Martin's put out their two garbage cans at the end of our driveway on Banks Street on Monday night in preparation for Tuesday afternoon pick-up. Good recycling people that we are, our plastic and glass items have already been removed to their separate “bins” (which in our case are individual plastic bags). Sometime Tuesday afternoon, “Tank” Davis and Aaron Robert – the city's garbage guys - swing by our house and empty our receptacles (which, by the way, by city ordinance our garbage is supposed to be set in) into the back end of the garbage truck. By the end of the route they head on down the road to Almena to drop off their load there (these guys make that trip four times a week there and back again every week of the year).

•  They drop it off into a large holding area which Al affectionately refers to as “Mount Trashmore”. The day I was there Al estimated that we were looking at three days' worth of county trash. From the

One side of "Mount Trashmore"

vantage point of the large windows of the control room that look out over the pile, the good news is that overall Al could assure me – and I, in turn, can assure the girls - that the majority of Barron County citizens are indeed recycling.

And now the sorting starts

Nevertheless, now that the trash is at the plant they need to now “sort” it which involves a guy in a front loader dragging out a pile of garbage from the mound and then he and another comrade essentially pulling out stuff that should not go into the fires of Gehenna (on the day I was there I saw a small mound of old chairs that looked like they had come from a school somewhere as well as a pile of assorted tin odds & ends that were being pulled aside to be moved over to the recycling part of the plant.)

It's a job that requires a lot of hand's on work

Off to a separate recycling bin

The boss looking out over Mount Trashmore

•  After the trash has been sorted, it is then pushed by the front loader into a bay of sorts and when ready, the bottom opens up and the trash falls into one of the two incinerators and begins its burn.

Garbage-in

Garbage-down

This is how the magic works

There be a whale of garbage in thar

Don't try this at home

While there is a whole science to this process the long and short of it is the Martins' garbage on Fifth Street, along with everybody else's trash on our route, is burned entirely. But then this is where the “magic” happens. That energy doesn't just go out a stack somewhere (God forbid!) No, it's transformed into electricity 

All that steam turns garbage into electricity

the bulk of which travels right across the road to the Saputo cheese plant on Highway P. Think of that: what was once an egg carton, plastic wrapper and a cereal box through the power of steam combustion gets transmuted into electrons and protons that runs the machines turning curds and whey into cheese. It's almost the stuff of Star Trek replicators!

From the transformer to here...

...to here (right across the road)

This stuff is heading to the landfill in Sarona

And what about the ash left over? Well they've thought of everything. After the burn the remaining ash is moved into a holding area of sorts which will later be transported to the landfill outside of Sarona. According to the literature Al handed me, this ash is “safer and takes up one tenth of the space required by the original waste” and essentially their responsibility to handle appropriately and not ours.

And all those stray batteries that make into the incinerator or the plethora of aerosol cans and other metals? Those get sorted out as well and land in a separate bay eventually making their way to a firm in Eau Claire that recycles these items.

Metals that were missed before the burn

Lots and lots of batteries can be found in this pile

"What is that?" That is someone's old tape measure

I'm sure I've oversimplified the process but essentially "Mount Trashmore" is a geographic entity of sifting garbage that gets made and remade every day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, for the benefit of us all.

Now let's talk recyclables as in Garbage-Out.

The Barron County Waste-to-Energy Facility is where all our recyclables go to get sorted and sent out to various plants for their conversion into something good. Just like our trash, there is a trail to follow and it goes something like this:

•  The Martins collect their glass and plastic containers and when

Linda prefers the one by the dam

the bags are full we make our way to one of the two sites of drop-off boxes in town. If it's my wife, she likes the ones down by the dam. If it's me, I prefer the one behind Pelican Place. But either way, our recyclable garbage makes it way to one of these sites.

You can thank Al that there are two extra ones for the summer months

Please follow instructions

On most weeks, the boxes are traded out on Mondays and Fridays, empty ones being dropped off and the full ones getting transported to Almena.

•  Once there these boxes are sorted out as well – plastic going one way, glass going another, and tin going yet another way – and all of it by hand.

What's he up to? Taking all the caps off the soda and water bottles that come his way.
And are there A LOT of them!

Do you know your numbers? I didn't either

Plastics: There are all kinds of plastics but for the most part the stuff they're dealing with there are Plastic #1 (PETE or PET – Polyethylene Terephthalate) which is the stuff they make soda and water bottles out of as well as salad dressing and peanut butter containers or Plastic #2 (HDPE – High Density Polyethylene) which are the kind of bottles and jugs that our milk, laundry detergent and shampoo comes in.

A tall stack of laundry detergent jugs

A tall stack of milk jugs

Glass: Meanwhile the glass gets sorted out according to color – brown or amber (beer) goes in one bin, clear (your lite beers and pop) in another and colored (your blues, greens and the like that are frequently used for wine) in yet another. According to Al, it's this third bin that there's the least demand for as well as the least value.

Amber/brown glass

white/clear glass

Not all glass is equal.
This is white glass.

Looks like white glass but it isn't
(it's the bottom edge that gives it away!)

Tin: Your typical soup or soda pop can is 100 per cent recyclable. As in, all of it. And they can be recycled an infinite number of times (unlike paper which has less and less fiber the more it is recycled). Like everything else at the plant, it gets sorted and shipped out eventually finding its way back to you within a few months time as a new can of soup or pop. Amazing.

• All these items are separated, crushed, stacked and then sent off to places to get transformed. According to some of the on-line web-sites I visited, Plastic #1 items is recycled into tote bags, furniture, carpet, paneling, fiber and polar fleece. Meanwhile Plastic #2 jugs and bottles are turned into pens, recycling containers, picnic tables, benches, fencing and detergent bottles, to name a few. Meanwhile all your glass items go somewhere to be reduced to a substance they call “cullet” and then, depending on color and quality made into a new glass bottle or various fiberglass products.

Where old refrigerators go to die

And what of all the other stuff that we accumulate and need to get rid of? Things like old appliances, television sets, microwaves, office computers, tires, carpets and the like? Ah, there are homes for all these items. Tires get burned (“it's a wonderful carbon-based product” says Al), refridgerators get emptied of their freon and eventually crushed, T.V.s go someplace (Warning from Al: Resist the temptation to kick in your old TV screen. It's probably on more than a few people's bucket-list but the reality is once you kick it in it is officially hazardous waste and the Waste-to-Energy Facility cannot receive it. Sorry to all the Chuck Norris wanna-bes out there), old carpets go to Madison and on it goes.

You're heard of Best Buy? This ain't it

Someone one went Chuck Norris on their old TV

Not hazardous waste if intact

All are burned in the incinerator in an eco-friendly way

Soon off to Madison

Something like this

When I was a kid, during the summer months I spent several long weekends with my grandparents who had a cabin in northeastern Wisconsin. One of the fun things to do back then was to “go to the dump” on a Saturday night and wait for the bears to come in. Although I may be imagining this but in my memory it seems that there was always a fire smoldering at the dump rife with old junk and refuse. Those days are long gone. While I'm sure there are still farmers around throwing their unwanted odds and ends into a hole in a back lot of theirs, for the most part the garbage industry is now heavily regulated and controlled. And I'm sure we all agree that's a good thing.

So, girls, recycling is happening in Barron County and a lot of it. According to Al, it's still far cheaper for Chetek to use drop boxes than to go to a curb-side recycling program. But you do raise a good question: “What about those people that can't get to a drop-off site – especially the elderly and those who don't drive? Can we ensure that they get access to the two sites in town?” I don't have an answer to that question yet. We're going to have to keep working the problem because garbage happens and it's in everybody's interest to make sure we pick up after ourselves the best we can.

Thanks, Al, for the tour and the education (anything I got wrong in this blog post
is entirely my fault!)

A few other fun and interesting facts about the Waste-to-Energy Facility and recycling in general:

• Currently 35,000 tons (100 tons per day) of waste is converted into steam energy each year.

• Since adding the condensing steam turbine generator in 2010, Barron County's waste has been converted into 4.7 billion pounds of steam.

• That steam would heat more than 1,400 homes or a community roughly the size of Cumberland, Chetek or Barron.

• The facility removes and recycles 1600 tons of various metals and e-waste each year.

• Each year 1000 appliances and numerous batteries and ballasts are recycled.

• Since 2011 over 350 tons (30 tractor/trailer loads) of Electronic Waste “E Waste” has been recycled.

Remember: CAPS off (they're only good for burning)

• According to the brochure that is available at both drop-off box sites and at City Hall, before you put your used water bottle into the bin you should remove the cap. Why? Well, apparently the plastic that the caps are made of are different than what the water bottles are made of. The caps are burned and the bottles are recycled. The day I was at the plant, there was a guy who all he was doing was ripping off as fast as he could the caps on all the soda and water bottles that were moving down the conveyor belt. I apologized for adding to his work-load (because I always replace the cap on any water bottle I finish). “Don't worry about it. You're in good company.” All this to say: REMOVE YOUR CAP AND RING FROM THE TOP OF YOUR WATER OR POP BOTTLE WHEN YOU ARE THROUGH. At the very least it will make Trevors' job a little easier.

The Barron County Waste-to-Energy Facility is located three miles south of Almena right off Highway P and across the road from Saputo Cheese. 

They are open to the public from 3 - 8 p.m. on weekdays and 7 a.m.-8 p.m. on weekends and holidays.

For more information call (715) 357-6566 and next time you're at one of the drop-off boxes site why not pick up one of their brochures? It is very user-friendly and informative.