Deb Markowitz, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, at a press conference on Thursday Credit: Alicia Freese

Deb Markowitz was standing amid beer cans in milk crates and piles of scrap wood Thursday afternoon. A towering stack of repurposed encyclopedias served as her podium. The secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources was holding a press conference outside the ReSOURCE Building Material Store in Burlington to discuss what she called the “maybe not-so-sexy issue of waste.” 

Unsexy as the announcement was, it affects all Vermonters. Several years ago, the legislature passed Act 148 to step up the state’s recycling and composting efforts. Despite Vermont’s green rep, Markowitz said the state’s efforts have plateaued during the last decade. The law has phased-in requirements, and a number of the new changes take effect on July 1. (Depending on where you live, based on local practices, they may be nothing new.)

Here are seven things you should know about the new rules:

  • Recyclable items — glass bottles, newspaper, aluminum cans, etc. — can no longer be dumped in the landfill. 
  • But you can leave them curbside, if you have that service already. Trash haulers now have to offer to take away your recyclables, in addition to your trash.
  • You can bring your leaves and pruned branches to any trash facility. They are now required to accept yard debris in addition to trash and recyclables. (Next year, haulers will also be required to pick this up.)
  • If you’re thinking this will cost more, you’re probably right. Haulers and trash facilities can’t charge residents a separate fee for their recyclables and yard waste, but they can raise overall fees to cover the extra costs.
  • Businesses and institutions that produce more than one ton of food scraps per week must compost that waste if there’s a facility within 20 miles. Previously, only places that produced more than two tons had to do this.
  • If there’s a trash can on public property, it must be accompanied by a recycling bin as well. (Bathrooms are exempt.)
  • Markowitz pointed out that Vermont now has just one state landfill, which can only hold so much waste.

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Alicia Freese was a Seven Days staff writer from 2014 through 2018.

10 replies on “Trash Talk: Seven Things to Know About Vermont’s New Recycling Rules”

  1. The second state landfill is in Montpelier. Seal up your garbage and send it to your representatives, many of whom had their neckties too tight which shut off the blood supply to the thinking organs.

  2. What about styrofoam containers and meat trays? Where are they recycled? Right now they are filling the land fill.

  3. Styrofoam, which is technically called polystyrene, is not accepted at most recycling facilities due to its lack of value in the secondary market and it’s also difficult to process due to its light weight. Most all other plastics can be recycled. What you will find if you have been provided with a trash toter and a recycle toter is how fast your recycle toter fills up vs trash (if you sort properly). The focus is to divert all recyclable and compostable material from our overburdened landfills.

  4. The truth behind the haulers having to pick up both your trash and your recycling isn’t discussed. We pay taxes for a local recycle center so now what! As usual the State laws and corporate influence is all over the law. It also seems the corporate haulers are the one’s making out. I don’t disagree with recycling. I have been recycling since a young girl. My dad used to bring our recycling to Rutland. In addition this announcement doesn’t talk about the future of having to recycle food scraps. I can’t imagine the issues there will be with animals getting into the curb side treats.

  5. I was surprised recently to learn that many of the plastics, such as #5, that I put in my recycling bin are actually going to the landfill instead of being recycled. VT needs to deal with this if they are really sereous about recycling.

  6. One thing that has not been acknowledged is that the hauler who will be required to pick up recycling with out charging the customer for it still has to pay a fee to the regional solid waste facility where they take their collected recycling materials. The state of Vermont has dropped the ball and enacted legislation that doesn’t support the solid waste district’s needs to be able to meet the cost of the doing business keeping our waste stream down to a minimum.

  7. This is fine for the city areas but not so much for those of us who live in the rural areas of the state. When you have to drive an hour to recycle, how good is that for the environment? My recycling facility is not near anything so it has to be a special trip. For those of us on a ridiculously tight budget because taxes keep increasing exponentially and incomes don’t, the increasing cost of trash and recycling is yet another nail in the coffin for life in Vermont. More laws, more taxes, when will it end?

  8. And where are these recycling centers in the Northeast Kingdom?
    Many of us have no trash pick-up anyway

  9. “And where are these recycling centers in the Northeast Kingdom?”

    The Northeast Kingdom Waste Management District has more than 30 recycling drop off locations in every corner of the NEK.

    http://www.nekwmd.org/towns.html

    They are the same trash transfer stations that folks without home trash pickup currently use to dispose of trash – most are open every Saturday and one evening during the week.

    I make my weekly trash/recycling run without undue hassle.

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