Please Support the NRRA HVAC Campaign!
If you're an NRRA Member (or a supporter of our work) you know our main focus is partnering to make recycling strong through economic and environmentally sound solutions. For example, last year we assisted our 441 members in recycling and managing over 81.5 million pounds of material and returned nearly $3 million net revenue to our members from the sale of their recyclables. Such efforts resulted in 207 million pounds of avoided carbon dioxide emissions, which is equivalent to removing 20,392 passenger cars from the road for an entire year.
We also pride ourselves in walking the walk, taking steps within our organization to minimize our environmental impact through economically sound practices.
Since 2006, we have owned our own 10,000 square foot two-story office building that serves as our headquarters in Epsom, NH. NRRA uses the first floor of the building for our staff of eleven, and we rent two spaces on the second floor to long-term commercial tenants to offset our costs of owning and maintaining the entire building. The office's large conference room serves as an important gathering place for our monthly Member Operations Marketing meetings for municipal solid waste facility operators.
Over the years, we have done our best to secure grant funding to make necessary updates to the building. Unfortunately our efforts aren't always successful, so we are asking our members and supporters for help. Please consider making a donation to our HVAC Campaign (additional details below).
The Details
In 2021, NRRA received a grant from the Madelaine G. von Weber Trust to update all bulbs and light fixtures to LED, reducing energy use, electricity costs, and waste as LED bulbs have a significantly longer lifetime. Annual lighting costs were reduced by an estimated 64%, leading to an annual return on investment of 25%.
In the summer of 2022, the NRRA Capital Improvement Plan committee determined that replacing NRRA’s Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system was the top capital improvement priority. NRRA’s HVAC system is approximately 25 years old and at the end of its useful life expectancy of 15-25 years. The HVAC system consists of four forced hot air oil burning furnaces and four air conditioners. All units must be replaced due to their age and NRRA had incurred substantial repair costs.
The plan was to replace our four oil furnaces and four air conditioners with heat pump condensers combined with more energy efficient and environmentally friendly high efficiency propane furnaces. NRRA’s existing oil tank would be discontinued from use and two new propane tanks installed. Replacing the oil furnaces with new oil furnaces would have been less expensive, but we decided to use propane instead, because propane burns more efficiently and cleanly than oil, therefore reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, rather than only relying on propane for fuel, NRRA opted to include heat pump condensers to further reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Using electricity, the heat pump condensers would primarily cool the building in the summer and help heat and cool the building in the spring and fall when temperatures remain above freezing, further reducing the need to use fossil fuels.
We would have preferred to acquire larger heat pump condensers so they could be the primary source of heating and cooling rather than secondary after propane. However, it was not possible to acquire large enough heat pump condensers to serve the building without extensive retrofitting of the building and ductwork.
By the winter of 2022, the HVAC system must have received the news of its upcoming replacement and decided to stop working (there were some very chilly days!) Our timeline was moved up, and the new system was installed in March 2023.
While we applied for two private grants to cover the costs, we weren't successful this time and received neither, leaving the substantial cost of this necessary update on the shoulders of our organization. For that reason, we're turning to you - our members and supporters - and asking for you to help us shoulder this cost so that we can continue to help and support YOU!