CT cements waste-plan update
Connecticut officially has a new plan for how it will meet its waste disposal goals in the coming years.
The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection issued a final version of its Comprehensive Materials Management Strategy this week, the first overhaul in a decade. A draft has been available since earlier this year.
The CMMS recommits the state to a goal of diverting 60 percent of municipal solid waste from incineration or landfilling by 2024. The plan calls for a combination of improved recycling systems and waste conversion technologies (such as anaerobic digestion), higher diversion and recycling rates for construction and demolition waste, and building on an existing push for manufacturers and other waste producers to take more responsibility for what happens to their products at the end of their useful life - concepts known as “product stewardship” or “extended producer responsibility.”
Over the past 10 years, the state has reduced its annual output of solid waste by approximately 200,000 tons, to approximately 3.6 million tons. That leaves 2.1 million tons to be diverted to reach the 60 percent goal.
Connecticut burns much of its waste, but there is concern that those facilities may face economic challenges in the future. Closures could create the need to ship more waste out of state at higher cost.
DEEP Commissioner Rob Klee said that if residents continue to generate as much trash as they do today, disposal costs will increase by $25 million by 2024.
“Stepped up efforts to reduce waste, divert waste, and recycle are critical to controlling the future costs for waste disposal,” Klee said.
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