Date: Fri 02-Feb-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

recycling-junk-mail

Full Text:

Junk Mail Recycling Halted Temporarily

The difficulty in obtaining cardboard boxes to store and transport junk mail

for recycling has temporarily put a stop to its collection at the town's

recycling center on Ethan Allen Road.

"We absolutely do want to continue this program, and we've been promised that

we will get a shipment of boxes any day, but so far they haven't arrived,"

Public Works Director Fred Hurley said on Wednesday.

The town was forced to stop collecting junk mail shortly after Christmas when

it became impossible to find a supply of the 4x4x4-foot sturdy cardboard boxes

which the town had been using to ship the junk mail to the Marcal Paper

Company in New Jersey, which recycles it to make toilet paper, tissue paper,

napkins and paper towels.

"Marcal trucks came through here to make deliveries and they would stop at the

(former) landfill on their way back to New Jersey and pick up the junk mail,

transporting it at no cost to the town," Mr Hurley said.

He said the alternative, using two dumpsters and hauling the junk mail to

Marcal, would cost the town about $1,000 per dumpster. It does cost the town

if residents opt to throw the junk mail away with the rest of their garbage,

he said, but not enough to offset these transporation costs.

"This happened to us briefly about three years ago," he said. "When the cost

of cardboard began rising again last year the box manufacturers stopped

donating them. We offered to buy the boxes and still couldn't get them. We did

get some from Redding which helped us for awhile."

Mr Hurley said the price of cardboard seems to be dropping again which should

help solve the problem.