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Seventh graders from Keene Middle School learned the rules of recycling in their city via classroom workshops on May 28 & 29. About 40 students from two KMS Extensions Program Focused Study Group classes participated in Keene Recycling workshops conducted by Education Manager Heather Herring of Northeast Resource Recovery Association (NRRA). NRRA's School Recycling Club (The Club) provides recycling education and outreach to K-12 schools. Since students are set up for learning from home, The Club was able to engage classes virtually, using Google Meet. The students composed questions in advance about recycling at the Keene Recycling...

By Alex Hanson, Valley News Staff Writer For the most part, people bringing their trash to the transfer station, even in a small town such as Unity, take little notice of the people who work there, said Vanessa Keith, who has worked at the town’s Mica Mine Road facility since 1997 and now manages it. Dropping off trash and recycling, yard waste and appliances tends to be a job done quickly, on the way to some other more enjoyable activity. “I guess I feel like we’re sort of invisible,” said Keith, who since 2014 also has worked at the transfer station in Lempster, N.H. Now, however, transfer station employees are considered...

Keene, NH –Eighth graders from Keene Middle School learned the basics of composting through virtual classroom workshops on April 29 & 30. About 30 students from two KMS STEM Focused Study Group classes participated in Back To The Earth workshops conducted by Education Manager Heather Herring of Northeast Resource Recovery Association (NRRA). NRRA’s School Recycling Club (The Club) provides recycling education and outreach to K-12 schools. Since the COVID-19 pandemic has confined students to learning from home, The Club had to get creative and set up a way to engage students virtually, using Google Meet™. The students first viewed...

Last Friday, I received a troubling email from my colleague. She had been contacted by the manager of a New Hampshire transfer station. You know, what some people still refer to as the town dump. The transfer station manager had resigned his position because the town directed him to open his recycling building back up to residents despite the manager’s objections. The facility has a drive-thru with close quarters, making it difficult to enforce social distancing. On the other hand, the town offices remain closed to ensure adequate social distancing. The transfer station staff are all over the age of 70. The manager quit out of...

In the fall of 2019, the New Hampshire HB 617 Recycling & Solid Waste Study Committee held fourteen hearings to study how the State can assist municipalities during these challenging recycling markets. NRRA’s Executive Director, Reagan Bissonnette, actively participated in these hearings and testified multiple times, along with some NRRA members. The committee’s final report was issued on November 1, 2019. In the 2020 legislative cycle, numerous bills have been proposed in New Hampshire that are relevant to NRRA’s NH members with respect to solid waste and resource recovery. Most resulted from the HB 617 Recycling & Solid Waste...

From December 2014 to January 2019, Rollinsford NH (Population 2,527) embraced single stream recycling i.e. putting all recyclables, including aluminum cans, cardboard, glass jars and bottles, paper, plastics and steel cans, into one container and shipping them to market where they were separated back into their individual components for marketing. As recycling markets continued to deteriorate and the cost per ton of single stream material exceeded the cost to throw it away, Rollinsford made the difficult decision to return to a source separated program. Rollinsford purchased a refurbished baler and, in July 2018, residents were...