June Featured Collection Partner of the Month: Chittenden Solid Waste District
une’s featured TRC collection partner is Chittenden Solid Waste District, a loyal participant of the program since 2007. In the past four years alone their one location has collected more than 2,176 mercury thermostats, diverting more than 16lbs of mercury from solid waste. Each year they continue to be one of the leading household hazardous waste facilities in terms of TRC’s collections nationwide.
“The TRC program is a great partnership between CSWD and the mercury-containing thermostat manufacturers to keep discarded mercury thermostats out of the waste stream”, says Jen Holliday, Compliance Program and Product Stewardship Manager for CSWD. “CSWD collects them and TRC recycles them at no cost. This has saved our agency thousands of dollars and helped keep mercury out of the environment.”
The Chittenden Solid Waste District (CSWD) is a municipality created in 1988 to manage the solid waste – including hazardous materials — generated within Chittenden County, Vermont. Their mission is to reduce and manage the solid waste generated within Chittenden County in an environmentally sound, efficient, effective and economical manner. Functioning much like a school or water district, CSWD – as well as other solid waste districts throughout Vermont — are government entities that design local solutions to the solid waste challenges faced by their member towns. CSWD is the largest solid waste district in Vermont serving the greater Burlington area with 17 member cities and towns and a population of approximately 153,000. To handle hazardous materials and the products that contain them, CSWD established its permanent collection program, the Environmental Depot in 1991. Residents and businesses from inside and outside the District can bring hazardous materials and products to the Depot for proper management, which includes reuse, as in the form of Local Color paint made from paint brought in for recycling, as well as recycling and environmentally sound disposal. In addition to the Environmental Depot, CSWD also collects certain hazardous products including mercury-containing thermostats at its seven drop-off centers.