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The region’s recyclers are encouraging towns to cut costs during the economic downturn of COVID-19 by trying new ways of reusing their glass.
Reagan Bissonnette is executive director of the nonprofit Northeast Resource Recovery Association. She says it’s been a couple of years since the sudden closure of the region’s main facility, in Massachusetts, that recycled glass bottles and jars.
Since then, she says more towns have been sending their glass to landfills, adding weight and expense to their trash hauling costs even during the economic strain of the pandemic.
Bissonnette wants more towns to take advantage of cheaper, local options that she says get more value out of that glasss.
Her group helps towns send glass to Canada to become fiberglass insulation, or have it crushed – along with glass-like products such as ceramics and Pyrex – into an aggregate...Read more
With the cost of garbage going up, up, up, what is one of the best ways to keep the weight out of your waste and help your town recycling facility? It turns out for every five bags of groceries you buy, the equivalent of two of them gets thrown out because 40% of food is wasted all along the food supply chain ( USDA ). In a waste audit at Fuller School in Keene, 62% of the weight of their trash was food scraps (NRRA).
The City of Keene approached the Northeast Resource Recovery Association (NRRA) because the City is interested in how to decrease tonnage sent to the landfill and educate the public on the value of composting. NRRA is a recycling and waste reduction nonprofit that enables communities to manage their own recycling programs. We work with recycling facility members to...Read more
The Northeast Resource Recovery Association (NRRA) has announced the recipients of its 2019-2020 School Recycling Club Awards. The award winners are:
School Recycler of the Year Award - Maple Street Elementary School , Contoocook, NH Teacher Recycler of the Year Award - Chris Asbell, Somersworth Middle School , Somersworth, NH Student Recyclers of the Year Award - Girl Scout Troop 11305 , Fuller Elementary School, Keene, NHNRRA's School Recycling Club (the Club) is a program for all schools in New England (and beyond). Designed for students and teachers in grades K-12, the Club enables schools to become more active in the world of recycling. Through its workshops, technical assistance, and recycling curricula, the Club is a fun and innovative way to give students encouragement, direction and networking opportunities to enhance school recycling programs. The Club is supported in part by New Hampshire the Beautiful, a non-profit funded by...Read more
NRRA participated in the NH Municipal Association's virtual conference on "Resilience" from November 18 to 20 with NRRA staff both presenting and staffing a virtual exhibitor booth.
NRRA Executive Director Reagan Bissonnette and Member Services Manager Bonnie Bethune presented "Recycling in NH: Keeping it Financially Sustainable and Safe." They were joined by nearly 50 attendees to discuss the economics of the current recycling markets and impacts from COVID-19. Attendees learned how to make their recycling operations more financially sustainable and discussed concrete steps municipalities can take to continue recycling safely during the pandemic. Heather Herring, NRRA Education Manager, staffed NRRA's first-ever virtual booth, which was "seen" by 250 of the total 443 conference attendees. Heather ventured into a new online platform, Whova, which was used for the conference in order to invite groups of attendees virtually for meet-ups throughout the 3 day-conference. Whova provided exhibitors a competition with points...Read more
Did you know that the Northeast Resource Recovery Association is one of only a handful of nonprofits in the entire country that offers a recyclables marketing cooperative model? This means that we directly connect sellers of recyclable commodities to purchasers of those commodities. Last year, we returned over $1.8 million to our members from the sale of their recyclables and enabled our members to recycle enough material to remove the equivalent of 22,393 passenger cars from the road for an entire year.
This year, we need support from individual donations more than ever.
NRRA has enabled communities throughout New England to manage their own recycling programs and reduce their waste for nearly forty years. Together, we partner to make recycling strong through economic and environmentally sound solutions. We support municipalities with cooperative marketing of recyclables and provide technical assistance and education to...Read more
On Monday and Tuesday, November 16 and 17, NRRA presented about using processed glass aggregate in infrastructure projects at the virtual event "Increasing the Use of Recycled Content in Infrastructure Projects." Over 85 people joined for two afternoons to learn about using processed glass aggregate, plastic corrugated drainage pipes with recycled content, ground asphalt, crumb rubber in roads and other infrastructure projects, and more.
Processed Glass Aggregate (PGA)NRRA Executive Director Reagan Bissonnette was joined by Brian Patnoe, NRRA Board Member & Littleton NH Transfer Station Manager, and NRRA members Bob Harrington, Public Works Director and John Early, Transfer Station Supervisor, of New London, NH to talk about NRRA's PGA program. Reagan shared the process for creating PGA, the various New England state specifications for using PGA , the benefits of using PGA, the results of a PGA survey that gathered examples of PGA use...Read more
EPSOM, NH (November 12, 2020) – The Northeast Resource Recovery Association (NRRA), a recycling nonprofit that enables communities to manage their own recycling programs, has released an ArcGIS story map and video that provide a transparent look at glass recycling. At a time when depressed recycling markets have many people wondering what happens with their recyclables, NRRA recognizes its 100 member communities in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts that are successfully recycling glass for over half a million residents.
Through its unique recycling cooperative model, NRRA provides its municipal members with two options to recycle their glass bottles and jars. First, communities can recycle glass into fiberglass insulation, which can be used to insulate homes and businesses. Second, communities can crush glass into processed glass aggregate (PGA), which can be used in road and other infrastructure projects in the place of gravel and sand.
“We are grateful for...Read more
The Northeast Resource Recovery Association (NRRA) has announced the recipients of its 2020 Recycling Awards, which recognize organizations and individuals for their contributions to support NRRA’s mission of partnering to make recycling strong through economic and environmentally sound solutions. The award winners were:
Business of the Year Award – OPRSystems, Inc. from Wilmington, Massachusetts Rookie of the Year Award – Steve Bullek, Public Works Manager for the Town of Lee, New Hampshire Sami Izzo Recycler of the Year Award – Paula Dow, Finance and Human Resource Manager, NRRAThe award winners were announced at NRRA’s Annual Meeting, which was held virtually on November 4, 2020.
Business of the Year – OPRSystems, Inc. : NRRA presented Dave Cameron, General Manager of OPRSystems, Inc., with the Business of the Year Award. NRRA works with many businesses to support its members with recycling and waste reduction....Read more