We've just taken what can only be described as an extremely interesting and very educational tour of The Medina County Central Processing Facility. William J. Strazinsky, District Solid Waste Coordinator, was our guide and provided an exceptionally informative look at the world class work that's being done right here in Medina County. Here's what Bill taught us:
The Medina County Central Processing Facility was thirteen months in the building, starting in May of 1992 and opening on July 1st in 1993. We built this facility in response to the new solid waste law that was passed in 1988 called House Bill 592. This new solid waste law said that from now on Counties are responsible for recycling and reaching new recycling goals that were set by the state legislators. They gave us until 1994 to reach these goals so we started to put a program together in the early 1990's. We formed a technical advisory committee of thirty-three people and a solid waste policy committee of five people and charged them with the responsibility of deciding what kind of recycling program Medina County would adopt to meet these new regulations. The technical advisory committee and the solid waste advisory committee began traveling around the United States to see how other communities were handling their solid waste. We didn't really discover what we should do but we figured out what we shouldn't do since many of the programs we saw were not working. When we were done, we decided the best thing for Medina County would be a mixed waste processing center since half of our population is urban and half rural.
We built this facility originally at a cost of $8.2 million which was borrowed from the Ohio Water Development Authority. When this plant opened on July 1, 1993, Medina County began to exercise something new called flow control. Flow Control means that the county controls the flow of waste by requiring all garbage and refuse collectors in the county to bring their collected waste to this facility for processing. We get all the garbage from Medina County from the residents, all the commercial companies, and all the industrial companies. We do not take industrial waste but we do take municipal solid waste from industrial companies. For instance, if you owned a plant that had 300 people working in it, they're going to eat lunch and generate garbage in the plant and we take that trash and we process the trash from all of the commercial companies like K-Mart, Walmart, Kohls, Burger King, and any commercial business where you can go buy things.
We open at 5:30 in the morning to begin accepting trash from the haulers and from 6:00 am until 4:30 pm we're open to the public. We're currently receiving about 1.1 million pounds, or 550 tons, of trash per day. Our job here at the processing facility is to process as much waste as we can and extract recyclables from the trash. If you stop and think about it, if 100% of all the garbage comes here for us to pull out all the recyclables, we have 100% recycling in Medina County. Everybody recycles in Medina County whether they want to or not because their waste comes here and we pull the recyclables out. We pull out newspapers, cardboard, wood, all the steel cans, all the aluminum cans, and we pullout what we call mixed paper which is a combination of small pieces of paper, magazines, some cardboard, and some newspaper. We pull out 2 kinds of plastic, the 2 liter bottles and milk jugs, and we pull out ferrous metal scrap and wood. If any new material becomes recyclable in the future, we don't have to educate the public about recycling this new material, we just have to add a couple people to our sorting or picking rooms and we just tell them to start pulling this new material out of the trash.
When we talk about pulling out recyclables, we have three phases or three different, distinct kinds of recyclables we pull out. The first phase is the normal recyclables that include the newspaper, plastic, and cans, and then we also have a system of conveyor belts in the plant for phase two which allow us to pull out all the two inch garbage. Any thing that is two inches or less in diameter falls through the holes in a drum called a trommel. This is a big deal because about forty-five tons, ninety thousand pounds, of two inch trash falls through these holes every day and we take this trash and mix it with yard waste in our compost facility to make a commercial grade of compost. Phase three of our recycling is where we make refuse-derived fuel pellets. Refuge-derived fuel (RDF) is made from the small pieces of paper and film plastic that's left after we've pulled out all of the recyclables. Film plastic is the baggies, garbage bags, and all of the soft plastics that we combine with the little pieces of paper we use to make these fuel pellets which are about the size of your little finger. Our goal is to produce 100 to 125 tons of RDF each day that we can make available to companies to use in the production of electricity or steam, meaning that we'll be turning garbage into energy. We're scheduled to begin producing RDF in late 2003.
When we first opened in 1993 we were getting about 360 tons of trash a day and now, due to the increase in population in Medina County, we are getting about 550 tons a day and sometimes we get up to 700 tons. We are in the final stages of an expansion that has lasted about a year and has cost us just a little over $2 million to add on to the building because of this increase in trash. Not only is the trash coming in greater volume due to the increased number of residents, but as more commercial and industrial companies start up or expand in the county, the amount of daily trash continues to grow.
When trash comes to this facility every morning starting at 5:30 am, and by the way we get about 60 to 70 garbage trucks a day, we have to decide whether the load of trash is a clean load or a dirty load. A dirty load of trash means there are no recyclables in it the dirty loads are just dumped at the east end of the building and that waste is transfered into trailers, each holding 40,000 lbs.of trash, and goes straight to the landfill. If the load is determined to be what we call a clean load of trash, we dump it at the west end of the building where we send that waste from the west end of the building to the east end which takes about 25 min.and we process this waste extracting the recyclables as the trash moves through the plant. We then take the recyclables and we put them in bales and we load them onto 48' trailers and send them out to the market where we're paid for these recyclables.
We not only have the Medina County Central Processing Facility at this location but we also have two other facilities at this location as well. They are both composting facilities, one being a Class 1 composting facility and the other a Class 4 composting facility. The Class 4 is strictly yard waste and residents and political subdivisions like townships, cities, and villages can bring all their yard waste here free of charge. We normally get about 13-15,000 tons of yard waste here per year and it is growing all the time. We take this yard waste and we turn it into compost, a process that takes about a year. Then we sell the compost to the public in bags for a $1.25 or they can shovel it themselves for $25 a ton. We limit the number of bags to 15 per person per day and to date we have sold 10,000 bags of compost and people have shoveled over 600,000 lbs on their own. This year we decided to take all the wood pallets that come to this facility and grind them up and put them through a coloring machine enabling us to sell both brown and black mulch. People can shovel their own into their vehicles for $65 a ton which is about $16 a cubic yard. The public can buy regular compost which is used to enrich your gardens and they can also buy mulch which is the decorate stuff that goes around your shrubs and trees. Our Class 1 composting facility is the only class 1 facility in the State of Ohio. We take the two inch garbage that is separated from the trash and we mix it with wood and yard waste to produce our commercial grade compost which is used only at landfills. Every landfill has to cover their trash with six inches of clay at the end of the day to control odors and to keep papers from flying around. Sometimes landfills run out of this clay so the Ohio EPA has approved that these landfills can use the commercial grade of compost that produce in our Class 1 facility as an alternate to the daily landfill cover.
The Medina County Central Processing Facility also has a large drop off area for that faction of the public that feels that "well, I know my trash comes here and I know my recyclables are taken out but I want to feel like I am doing something as a resident". A lot of our senior citizens and other people who may not have a trash pick up use our drop off area where they can drop off various recyclables like bottles and jars and where they can drop off used motor oil, anti-freeze, batteries, tires and yard waste.
We have four events during the year, two in the spring and two in the fall. We have a week long Appliance Round-up and during that week, residents can bring in their old appliances free of charge and in the case of refrigerators, we'll even remove the freon for you as required by law. We usually get between 800 and 900 appliances those weeks. On our Recycling Collection Day, held twice a year, residents can bring all of their paints and related paint solvents, glues, and asphalt products to the recycling center and the Brunswick service garage along with used batteries, phonebooks, and motor oil - free of charge.
Our facility is a marriage between government and private industry. There are only five county employees here and we are under the wing of Sanitary Engineering Department. Norton Environmental, which is based in Independence, Ohio, employs 75-80 people here. They are under contract with the county to run this facility for us. My job pretty much is to oversee what goes on here and to make sure that they are complying with our contract. Norton Environmental has been with us since 1993 to help us design and build this facility and then we gave them a three year operating contract with a three year option to help us run it. In 1996, we exercised that option and they ran it till 1999 when we went out for bids for a five year contract to just run the plant as it was already designed and built. Norton Environmental, having the best offer, was given that contract, too, so they've been with us since the very beginning.
The Medina County Central Processing Facility is a state of the art facility. We have hosted over 19,000 people who have toured the facility and our plant has been toured by people from 26 different countries. We're a one-of-a-kind facility in Ohio and there are only about 25 facilities of this type in the entire country. In 1997 we had the honor of being chosen as the Number One Recycling Facility in the United States, an award given by the Solid Waste Association of North American, the largest waste organization in the world, and one that makes us very proud of what we've accomplished here.
Medina County residents certainly have good reason to be proud of the work that's being done at The Medina County Central Processing Facility. It not only shows what our community can achieve, but it once again shows the world what a great community we have. Kudos to Bill and the entire staff at The Medina County Central Processing Facility and to Norton Environmental for their great work in making the facility a world class operation!
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