Palmer Township could be getting a new recycling facility that aims to spare resuable goods from a different fate.
RIZZ Containers & Disposal LLC recently proposed a 5,000-sq.-ft. site plan for 2210 Corriere Road near Palmer Nursery to the Palmer Township Zoning Committee.
- A 5,000 sq. ft. recycling facility has been proposed in Palmer Township
- The facility will sort construction materials
- Building proposal includes a plan to keep odors at bay
The company still needs approval from the township's planning commission.
RIZZ provides clean-out services for houses, apartments and also provides commercial and waste recycling services for colleges in the greater Easton area.
Cardboard and wood
RIZZ owner Robert Rizzolino said in collecting materials, he's found a lot of recyclable material will not be accepted at recycling facilities, like cardboard and wood.
Truck loads of cardboard often get contaminated with garbage that renders an entire load a fate to the landfill, he said.
Contamination isn't just when materials are spoiled and unusable. Recyclable material needs to be separated from garbage and trash. Rizzolino said that when delivering materials to recycling facilities, the facilities immediately observe the trucks with cameras to see if any of them have garbage. If they do, the load cannot be accepted.
"It burns me up that, let’s say a contaminated load of cardboard that would go onto a conveyor that could be all reused at paper mills [or] cardboard mills and instead when loads are contaminated it goes to landfills,” Rizzolino said.
“It burns me up [when] a contaminated load of cardboard .. goes to landfills.”Robert Rizzolino, Owner of RIZZ Containers & Disposal, LLC
Sometimes instead of throwing garbage into the right bin, Rizzolino said, someone at a warehouse or a college may throw garbage into the collection dumpster.
“My whole thing was, whatever I do, I do right," he said, "When you’re doing this and you’re saying ‘Oh my God, this whole load can be recycled, why is it going into a landfill?’"
Cardboard and wood are the two materials the company collects the most from 11 different warehouses in the area, Rizziolino said. Wood pallets that warehouses used in shipping can be recycled into mulch or processed at paper mills with cardboard.
Permits
Rizzolino is seeking a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection [DEP] permit for the recycling center that would sort metal, furniture, sheet rock, wood and cardboard and help prevent these items going to landfill facilities by decontaminating the items.
The DEP and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have rules and regulations about how materials can be handled. Rizzolino said that any collected material cannot be dumped on the ground and has to go into sorting facilities like the one he is proposing.
He said without this type of facility, the materials have to go to the landfill and couldn’t be dumped anywhere else. With the new facility, drivers would be able to collect goods, drop off at the facility and return to other collection sites.
Rizzolino said garbage will go into a trailer or dumpster to be hauled. The DEP permit does not allow garbage to stay overnight.
Odor concerns
The new recycling sorting facility would sit near residential homes and commercial properties, creating concern at a recent Palmer Township Board of Supervisors meeting.
Council members raised concerns that the new recycling center could possibly emit odors and generate noise complaints from neighbors.
The material RIZZ collects would not contain municipal solid waste, Rizzolino said, which is what homeowners and renters dump into their trash and recycling cans. And the proposed recycling facility will take construction and demolition material only, so there shouldn’t be odors since they’re only sorting metals, wood and cardboard.
Additionally, the new facility would have two Sonozaire Odor Neutralizing machines that use magnetic charges to eliminate smells, he said.
RIZZ collects trash with 22-ft. dumpsters that are 5 ft. high. Along with its sister company, it sorts through 460 cubic yards of recycling and 1,200 tons of waste per month.
“It’s a known fact in our industry that Americans are the most wasteful in the world. There’s so much that’s going to landfills that do not need to go to landfills if you have a facility like I’m building.”
