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Three weeks before Polk County ends curbside recycling pickup in unincorporated areas – including suburbs outside of Lakeland city limits – county officials called reporters to the central landfill to discuss potential recycling alternatives and new environmental initiatives.
The county is ending its 22-year-old recycling program Oct. 1, saying restrictions from China and other markets have driven recycling costs so high the county will save $5.5 million a year by suspending the program.
For people who live inside Lakeland city limits, the city of Lakeland is continuing its curbside recycling pickups.
Alternatives: Residents who would like to continue recycling can bring their materials to the central landfill near the Polk Parkway’s Winter Lake Road exit.
In addition, the county is creating a licensing procedure for contractors who want to fill the recycling gap by providing a subscription service to customers, Henderson said.
What to do with your recycling bins: Residents can keep their bins and use them for garbage, county officials said. Or they can call the county at 863-534-6000 to have their recycling bin picked up and taken away.
Cost increase: Despite one less service, the county’s waste collection and disposal fees are increasing from $206.50 to $337.21 annually. That’s because the fee the county pays to its contractor has gone up for the first time in seven years under a new contract, according to Dale Henderson, director of the county’s Solid Waste Division.
“The industry has seen significant increases during the last seven years in the cost of equipment, fuel, insurance, labor, and other expenses that directly impact the cost of doing business,” Henderson said. “These are costs that must be passed on to the consumer to ensure safe and reliable solid waste collection services for the period.”
He added that the new contract is not a flat-rate fee, but has a capped 5% increase built in.
”So it’s a new world, but our contractors are stepping up with” new equipment, he said, adding that they have worked to eliminate missed pickups and late pickups that had resulted in numerous consumer complaints to the county.
Environmental Programs
County officials tempered the news about recycling and waste fees by announcing two new green initiatives coming to Polk County during the next month that they say are better for the environment:
- A new biofuel plant that will convert to natural gas the gasses already emitted by the landfill.
- An on-site wastewater treatment facility in partnership with the University of Florida.
Biofuel plant
The landfill mountains within eyesight of the Polk Parkway cook up a biogas from the decomposition of organic materials and waste. Polk County was already capturing the gases, piping them to a nearby unit and burning them off through flares, which reach up to 1,800 degrees Farenheit and look like giant outdoor restaurant heaters.
OPAL Fuels paid $60 million to build a plant to refine the biogases, removing sulfer compounds and carbon dioxide, creating a fuel that is 98% methane and usable as compressed natural gas in vehicles.
“We’re in the business of collecting biogas,” said Allen Hunt, senior vice president of construction for OPAL Fuels. He stood in front of the new facility and the old flares. “Environmentally, you get a local emissions reduction that would otherwise be flared like you see behind us,” he said.
This is only the second landfill biofuel plant in Florida, Hunt said.The program will provide $500,000 in income to the county.
Water treatment
Just down the road from the OPAL Fuels facility sits a network of five ponds designed to clean the rainwater that percolates through the landfill. Plastic liners at the bottom of the garbage mountains prevent what insiders call “garbage juice” from leaching into groundwater or the Floridan aquifer — the source of most of the state’s drinking water.
It cost the county $12.2 million to build the 12-acre, open-air series of filtration ponds. But, it will save the county more than $2.5 mllion annually in payments to a vendor to haul off and treat the water.
Henderson estimates the ponds will be able to handle 30,000 gallons of wastewater daily. The water enters the first pond for aeration. Another pond removes iron, ammonia, organic matter, sodium and chloride.
It filters more as it moves through the other ponds and then enters a “large-cell, free-water wetlands.” That pond has four layers under the water: coarse gravel, then two layers of less coarse gravel, then sand, with vegetation growing from that.
It spends a long time in the free-water wetlands before entering a zero discharge pond, where it can filer through the soil and into the aquifer.
“It’s in compliance with groundwater standards,” said Dreyton Lott, a doctoral student with the University of Florida.
The entire process takes about three weeks. The results could be seen immediately on Tuesday morning as a mother duck escorted four or five ducklings through the weeds into the wetlands pond.
What’s next: Both the biofuel plant and the water treatment facility are expected to be operational in the next month.
Henderson said they “represent the cutting edge of technology within the solid waste industry.”
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I’ve often wondered why pickup could not be reduced from weekly to monthly. It takes a while to fill up the bin anyway, and this should cut costs dramatically. Won’t be long before Trash Mountain grows ever larger.