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NRRA wants to recognize schools and their dedicated staff and students for continuing their recycling efforts despite the challenges presented by the pandemic. We are happy to announce that we will be accepting nominations for our School Recycling Awards for the 2019-2020 school year. Please use the Nomination Form to complete and submit your nominees for school, student, teacher or staff recycling awards. The deadline is November 20, 2020 . Selections will be made and the awards will be presented virtually during the holidays.
In addition, New Hampshire the Beautiful will be accepting essays for consideration to receive their School Recycling Innovation Award. This generous award comes with a $500 check to be used for improving your school's recycling program. To learn more about this award, see the Press Release from 2018. The deadline for submitting essays is also November 20, 2020 , with the...Read more
NRRA Staff have been working throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic to keep our NRRA Members' recyclables and solid waste moving, some working completely remote and others alternating between remote and on site at the NRRA office in Epsom, NH.
Need a Release Number, Container Swap, Pick-Up Status, General Inquiry?The first point of contact for all inquires is NRRA's Administrative Department, which includes Stacey Morrison, Lindsay Dow & Sam Foresta.
Send in your request via email: info@nrrarecycles.org
This email inbox is monitored regularly by the Administrative Team from 8AM-4PM, Monday through Friday. All requests can be sent here and will make their way to the appropriate staff member to take care of.
LOAD REQUEST FORM...Read more
NRRA's Finance Manager, Paula Dow, recently celebrated her 30th Anniversary of working here at NRRA. Paula has worn many hats in her years here at NRRA. Even once, acting as NRRA's interim Executive Director. This organization and our members are extremely fortunate to have Paula among our ranks. Former NRRA Board Member Susy Mansfield said it best when she said that "Paula is the NRRA's memory, chief organizer, our calm and steady point person." We dug deep into the NRRA archives to find some pictures of Paula through the years and many past and present NRRA staff members and trustees sent in videos and words of accolades to congratulate and thank Paula for her many, many years of dedicated service to NRRA. We hope you'll take a moment to check out Paula's 30th Anniversary Presentation that includes the pictures, videos and accolades collected in...Read more
Keene, NH asked NRRA to research two food scrap composting systems in order to reduce the weight that is going into MSW (Municipal Solid Waste). Heather Herring created a video to show how she set up a Subpod composting system using worms in her yard to test the ease of setup, use, and amount of material she can keep out of the landfill. NRRA would love to work with organizations, schools, or restaurants in the Keene area using food scrap composting systems. Stay tuned for more as this project continues and for more videos!
Heather Herring, Education Manager of NRRA, joined the Strafford Regional Planning Commission meeting to discuss current issues with recycling, solid waste, and composting with their members in New Hampshire. SRPC's focus for this meeting was on finding ways communities could band together to share resources, define what regional recycling/composting looks like, increase the revenue for recycling, and avoid hauling costs if necessary. SRPC has 18 member municipalities in Southeastern New Hampshire and other invited guests included Mark Richardson, SRPC Commissioner and retired Transfer Station Manager from Hampton, NH, and Jen Czysz, from Mr. Fox Composting in Maine.
The following topics were discussed: Composting set-up in NH; single stream recycling issues, contamination, the human behavior component of recycling, education, and recycling budgets.Read more
Welcome back, MOM meetings! Members drove their trucks up, up, up and around the capped Manchester, NH landfill to meet in person for the first time since March due to COVID-19. We had the best view and the best September weather on top to catch up on NRRA news and discuss items! Later in the afternoon, Reagan, Heather, and Bonnie also held a remote version of the MOM agenda for members who could not make it in person. We reviewed the latest in cooperative marketing and purchasing, especially the challenge with marketing #1 PET plastics; summarized the success of the Summer Webinar Series and other items in our Resource Library, reviewed recent topics on the listserve; updates on the Keene Composting Grant; a School Club report; reviewed recent events NRRA participated in and reminded everyone about NH the Beautiful sign points. Dawn Quirk reviewed the layout...Read more
The Times They Are A-Changing
If nothing else, the recycling market is exciting! Prices for recyclables go up and down, tipping fees for MSW (Municipal Solid Waste) increase, methods of collecting waste change, and our members change with them. NRRA has worked with Merrimack, NH for the last 20 years and Solid Waste Foreman, Kris Perreault, is active on our listserve. Merrimack has changed from a community that source separated recyclables (residents sort aluminum cans in one bin, cardboard in another bin, etc.) to baling single stream material (residents combine all recyclables into one bin) in a 100 cubic yard trailer to compacting this material. They currently work with NRRA to move their single stream material, as well as scrap metal, freon, electronics, bulbs, propane, and tires.
We are approaching town budget season, and some have their Municipal Solid Waste contracts to review. NRRA can assist members with...Read more
Did you know that NRRA helped its members recycle 2,206,857 pounds of plastics in 2019? According to estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency, those recycled plastics had the environmental impact of conserving 1,655,145 gallons of gasoline! To learn more about the other materials NRRA members have recycled and their environmental impact, check out our most recent Annual Report . NRRA members and their residents are increasingly hearing negative news about plastic recycling, including a recent NPR story " How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled ." While there are some challenges and limitations with plastics recycling, NRRA enables its members to responsibly recycle many plastics.
For example, NRRA offers a #1-7 baled plastics program for our members, which accounted for 25% of all plastics marketed for NRRA members in 2019. NRRA’s Vendor, Trigon Plastics in Newmanstown, PA, processes 90% of...Read more