KINGSTON – The Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency handles only dual-stream material for recycling while private haulers offer single-stream collection.
That has caused a dilemma in how to sort the materials and sell them, said County Legislator Laura Petit, chairwoman of the county’s Recycling Oversight Committee.
“They are also not getting the quality of material. If the smaller haulers are bringing it in, generally there is a lot of what we call ‘wish recycling” or ‘dream recycling,’ meaning it is not just your number one plastic water bottles or your number two laundry jugs. It’s kiddie swimming pools and it’s molded plastic that your blueberries come in and that is not a material that is easy to market and the resource recovery agency does not want to, and cannot process that, in their dual-stream facility,” she said.
County Legislator Joe Maloney, a member of the recycling oversight committee told a session of the group on Tuesday that “the future is all about separation.”
