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LOCAL GOVERNMENT CASE STUDY: |
NEW HANOVER COUNTY -
PALLET RECYCLING |
In July 2005, New Hanover County began offering pallet recycling services as part of their C&D recycling efforts. Pallets are accepted at the C&D recycling area at the New Hanover County Landfill. There is signage at the landfill’s entrance and a concrete pad on which mixed C&D can be dumped. Customers are charged $46 per ton to dump mixed C&D material, including pallets.
Pallets and clean wood waste are sorted from the mixed C&D material and stacked until approximately 1,000 – 1,500 tons accumulate. A contract grinder, American Property Experts, grinds and markets the material as boiler fuel. New Hanover negotiated a highly competitive rate for the contract grinding services.
Other costs to run the program are embedded in the total cost to manage a low-level C&D recycling operation. Supplies represent a nominal cost, as old equipment from the landfill are used. With four employees at $13/hour, labor costs can be significant.
Based on the first six months of fiscal year 2005-06, New Hanover expects to recycle between 7,000 – 8,500 tons of wood waste this year. Of that total, approximately 15 percent (or between 1,050 and 1,275 tons) is estimated to be pallets.
New Hanover County’s C&D recycling processing center at
the
county landfill, shown above, accepts pallets and other
clean
wood waste.
March 2006
For a PDF of this case study, click here.
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