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As our global population continues to grow, you might guess that the amount of waste we produce also grows - and you're right! The quantity of waste that we produce today is in fact unprecedented. Responsible waste management has become increasingly more important to aid in assuring a green future for generations to come. With that in mind, we met Amanda, from the Portage County Solid Waste Department to dig into what they do.
We’ll start in the 1970s. Some of the municipalities of Portage County wanted to pull their resources, close the dumps, and stop burning trash. After many years of planning, the county built a regional landfill, and the Solid Waste Management Board was established in 1980 to oversee its construction. Later, the board took over the management of solid waste and recycling disposal on behalf of local municipalities.
Amanda says the challenge for her three-person department is not so much managing the increased amount of waste, but how to properly dispose of it. At that time, people and municipalities would just add waste to the local dump. There were a lot of rodents, burning garbage, nasty smells, and sometimes worse! These days, we have specifically engineered sanitary landfills, and the original Portage County landfill has been closed for 15 years.
So what makes a “sanitary” landfill? The Portage County Solid Waste department makes sure the water quality in and around the landfill is properly taken care of. They also monitor CO2 and methane emissions and track water runoff. The gasses are captured via a piping system and burned off through a gas extraction process. That's a little flame you see coming out of the side! Some landfills, like the Cranberry Creek Landfill in Wisconsin Rapids capture that energy and use it instead of just burning it off. The gas is captured and burned to power turbines to generate energy for the area.
The Portage County Solid Waste department is located along highway 54 in Plover. It is open to the public and offers the community a wide variety of services that might surprise you!
A lot of people they see on a regular basis are DIY-ers, people doing home projects, construction, demolition, and more. They bring in construction or demolition waste, along with any outdated or broken appliances that might have inspired the home upgrade. While the local garbage pickup can’t accept things like hazardous waste, light bulbs, batteries, electronics, appliances and things like that, Portage County Solid Waste has you covered. Amanda says their philosophy is, “If you don’t feel safe drinking it, we’ll take it.” They also properly dispose of these materials for local businesses and farmers.
There are some materials they can’t accept, like asbestos and yard waste, but they take most everything else. Bryan even points out they have a couple boats on site – they can accept boats up to 16 feet long, but anything bigger has to be trailered directly to a landfill. Under 16 feet though? That gets crushed. Amanda says the guys do enjoy crushing things, and Brooklyn figures it must be pretty satisfying to crunch up something like that.
As cool as it would be to crunch up an entire boat, the fun and games end when people don't properly dispose of items like lithium-ion batteries – the number one item that causes fires and facilities like this. People shouldn’t put electronics in the trash, but of course many still do, usually because it never occurs to them that it could be dangerous. When a lithium-based battery is exposed to oxygen (if it’s punctured or crushed, for example) it is extremely flammable. Remember the Samsung Note 7? There was an issue with its lithium-polymer battery that would cause it to leak to the point of spontaneously combusting. That issue was fixed, but the same machine that can crush an entire boat can damage a lithium battery.
There are other dangers as well: improperly disposed medical needles can harm workers as they sort items, and some people even dump ash from fires! Make sure if you any ash has been cool for at least 48 hours before you bring it in. Amanda says they had a dumpster fire last year where some hot ash came in and kindled a small fire. Thankfully it was contained in the dumpster and by the time the fire department got there it had burned itself out.
If you’re not sure of what can be disposed of via the Solid Waste department, there are resources you can find. Amanda has been on the news a few times, and maintains what she calls a “cheeky little Facebook” page to discuss what can and can’t be recycled and disposed of properly.
Amanda is also active in the community, visiting schools and civic groups for education. And if you want just the nuts and bolts for what her department does, they have a web page on the county website. If you ever have questions about what they accept and what they don’t, what fees might be involved, or what their hours are, it’s all on the website! If you just want to get cool random bits of interesting info, Amanda shared recently on Facebook that:
Wait, potatoes? “For some reason we get potatoes. They're compostable, just not in your recycling bin, please.” She also says, “We get dirty diapers. The box of diapers says ‘recyclable’ on the side, but for some reason people think the diapers are recyclable as well. So we get dirty diapers.”
So they can’t take everything, but what they do accept is impressive. Rob lists some of the things he saw when they toured the facility:
And of course, electronics are a whole separate deal. They accept electronics and partner with a specialty electronics recycler who takes them off-site to process properly. There are a couple processors in Wisconsin, and Amanda got to go on a few tours of them to watch people disassemble things like old-school tube TVs. She said the glass usually goes to a hazardous waste landfill because of the phosphorates and lead used in them. The plastics are usually recycled into other hard plastic items like car parts, and the electronic boards head to a smelter that will remove precious metals for use in future devices – including low-grade gold used for tarnish-resistant electrical contacts.
Rob asks if they work with local automotive companies like Schierl Tire & Auto Service to help recycle or properly dispose of things like tires and chemicals, and Amanda says most service centers (like ours) already work with companies that do a great job of keeping the cycle going. However, Portage County Solid Waste is open for the general public who might prefer changing their own oil or find themselves in possession of an old tire or two.
Antifreeze and oil can be dropped off at no charge (just call ahead), but it’s very costly to recycle tires, so there is a charge for that. You can find all their fees (and find out what there’s no charge for) on their FAQ page.
Fun fact about tires: There’s one company in Wisconsin that recycles them, and that’s Liberty Tire Recycling in Auburndale. They are taken to the facility where 98% of all the tires are recycled, usually by mulching them up for substrate that’s used under astroturf in sports fields like the Community Stadium at Goerke Park here in Stevens Point. The ground up tires can be used in a number of different civil engineering projects, as well as burned at power plants and cement manufacturing plants. There are two waste energy facilities in Wisconsin: one in Barron County and one in LaCrosse. There’s a lot of energy in an old tire!
When and what people tend to drop off or get rid of is seasonal. Amanda says during the winter when everyone is inside trying to stay warm, their facility sends out 10 or 15 tons of recyclable a day and around 60 tons of garbage. During the summer, recyclables jump up to around 20 tons a day – and garbage skyrockets to 190 tons. On average, Portage County alone funnels 100 tons of garbage and around 20 tons of recycling per day through the Portage County Solid Waste Department. There are 72 counties in Wisconsin, so…we throw away a lot of stuff!
Ideally, we would recycle more and throw away less. Since we are All About the Car around here, Rob asked Amanda what car-related things her facility takes so we know in the future what we can keep out of landfill or hazardous waste dump. They prefer each liquid to be in its original container (please do not mix chemicals), and if you want to keep the container (if you’re dropping off old gasoline and want to keep the gas can) just call ahead and let them know. They need to know what the liquid is in order to dispose of it properly, and if they can’t tell, they need to have it tested by an outside company.
Free to dispose of
Disposal fee may be charged for:
Again, check their website for information about pricing and the types of materials they can accept.
While Portage County Solid Waste does charge to dispose of single-use batteries (like alkalines), Amanda said Staples and Batteries Plus will also accept old batteries. Lithium batteries are of course a different beast, due to their extreme flammability as she mentioned before. And as you might guess, a lithium battery that could ignite, especially in a facility that also accepts gasoline and other hazardous chemicals, might cause a safety risk.
Amanda says they do sort liquids by category – flammable, poison, etc. – and everything is stored in proper containers. They work with a hazardous waste company that picks everything up to be disposed of in closed, hazardous waste landfills. Many flammable items are burned in cement kilns. All her team has to do is sort and store everything properly to minimize the risk of accidents.
Even though the Portage County Solid Waste facility is not a full hazardous waste facility (they are licensed for household hazardous material as a collection point, not disposal), their site manager takes a class every year to stay up to date on safety and legal requirements. There are other annual training sessions for the team, and they are involved in the state and national solid waste associations like Associated Recyclers of Wisconsin, Wisconsin’s County Solid Waste Association, and the Solid Waste Association of America. On top of educational classes, these other organizations supply a constant stream of information and support, as well as forms where the team can ask specific questions about how to identify and handle mystery items that have been dropped off for disposal.
They are also looking to expand the facility to keep up with demand. Amanda says they are nearing their permitted level of what they can accept. Turning people away is not an option, so they are looking into ways they can meet the local demand. The first step will probably be the addition of compactors to the site. This will allow them to compact the trash that is picked up for final disposal and allow them to accept more at a time before it is picked up by a partner company or shipped out to its final destination. Just one compactor will cut their loads by 25% while expanding their daily intake.
Of course, not everything can be compacted. For example, the boats they discussed earlier can be crushed, but not compacted. Hazardous liquids and lithium batteries would be a bad idea in the compactor. But just that extra 25% of capacity freed to process other waste will be a massive improvement, allowing them to continue to meet demand as it grows. It’s important to note that Portage County Solid Waste exists specifically to support the public – businesses produce more waste and recyclables than their facility can process, so local businesses usually have agreements with other waste processing organizations.
By the time our discussion came to a close, Brooklyn and Bryan were both ready to volunteer – Brooklyn especially wanted to crunch up some boats. Bryan would just be happy playing with the big machines and driving the loader. We certainly learned a lot talking to Amanda, and we’d like to thank her and her team for hosting us and talking trash.
Today’s Road Trip: The Yerkes Observatory in Lake Geneva, WI
They say if astronomers had a walk of fame, it would be the Yerkes Observatory, home of the world’s largest refracting telescope. It's the birthplace of astrophysics, a combination of astronomy and physics, and is actually where Edwin Hubble did some of his first research about our galaxy and the expansion of the universe. Maybe you’ve heard of the orbiting telescope that’s named after him.
The observatory has been around for quite some time (Albert Einstein also visited during his first trip to America in 1921). It was owned by the University of Chicago for many years, and was recently given back to the Yerkes Foundation. The Observatory’s 50-acre campus has been painstakingly restored over the past few years. It’s open to the public, so you can visit the historic facility where many NASA scientists and other astrophysicists have studied for generations.
Even if you’re not a scientist, this beautiful campus boasts venue space with gardens, they offer tours of the grounds, and you can book space there for everything from company meetings to amazing weddings. School groups are welcome, and their guided tours are rich with information on who has used the giant telescope, what people have studied over the years, scientific breakthroughs that have happened, and so much more. If you aren’t looking for an information-rich guided tour, you’re welcome to just visit on your own and enjoy the gardens at your own pace. Since the Observatory is still a working science institution, the interior is only open to the public for guided tours at certain hours.
They also host a number of different events of their own throughout the year, and you can find out more about them on their website.
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