When you put your recycling in a container [at another Sullivan County transfer station], it gets picked up by a truck, and that truck comes here.”

Kassie Thelman

MONTICELLO, NY — If you drive through the heart of Monticello, down Broadway, past Walgreens, past Spring Street on your right, you’ll come upon Landfill Drive. A turn down that road blankets you with wetlands and cattails on either side and brings you dead-on to what looks like a large, golden hill at this time of year. If you are a resident of Sullivan County, this is the place where that last cardboard box you broke down, the plastic cup out of which you enjoyed iced coffee, or the bag of garbage you lifted from your kitchen bin, goes.

At the top of phase 2 of the landfill, looking over the earlier phases. Phase 2 was supposed to last the county 30 years, but only lasted 10 before …

A landfill, full

“From the old Apollo mall, you can see it. If you didn't know it was garbage you would think it’s just a nice mountain,” said Kassie Thelman about the Sullivan County landfill in Monticello. Thelman serves as the recycling coordinator in the Department of Solid Waste and Recycling. She’s a Sullivan County native, raised in Bethel, who attended school at SUNY Sullivan and SUNY Binghamton, graduating with a degree in environmental planning. 

The hills at the Monticello transfer station are really large cells of trash, compacted and covered with a layer of soil and grass seed. Small pipes are distributed amongst the hills, poking up into the air and connecting back down. These collect the methane that is released as the trash breaks down. Methane, a greenhouse gas known for its destructive effect on the environment, is more than 28 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The collected methane is funneled to a pipe where it is lit on fire, reducing the smell that would accumulate if it were not burned. 

The Sullivan County landfill has been closed since 2010. Phase 2 of the landfill was supposed to last the county 30 years as a receptacle of the county’s trash, but filled up in one-third of that time, both from Sullivan County trash, but also because legislators allowed in “out-of-county” garbage. As a result, none of Sullivan County’s current trash can even be disposed of here—it must be trucked out to the Seneca Meadows landfill, over three hours away. 

“It’s been a big topic of conversation because the Seneca Meadows landfill could be closing, so if that happens we’re going to have to find a new place to send all of our garbage, and it’s probably going to be more expensive,” said Thelman.

Cardboard baled by the transfer station's baling machine.

The many paths of recycling

Even though Monticello can no longer accept new trash, it is still gathered there from the other seven transfer stations in Sullivan County. The same goes for the county’s recycling. 

Recycling is a wheelhouse of many moving parts. Different companies handle different materials, and bids on materials can change as often as monthly. Scrap metal goes upstate to Weitsman Recycling; rubber tires go to Casings Inc. near Albany, to get shredded; cardboard is picked up by J.C. Paper Co. out of Poughkeepsie. 

“Cardboard is worth the most,” Thelman explains. A company, such as J.C. Paper Co., buys the cardboard from the transfer station, where it then is shipped to get processed and re-made. 

“Our cardboard is set up on a monthly basis, so every month I get a new price,” Thelman said. “When I started a year and a half ago we were getting $90 a ton, and now we’re getting $135.” 

The paper, plastic, glass and aluminum recycling are “single stream,” all being dropped into one large building. Some Sullivan County transfer stations, such as Highland, have only recently switched to single-stream collection, though Monticello has been using single-stream recycling for more than 10 years. 

“Before, when you went to Highland and had your papers in one bin and your plastics in the other, it was all coming here anyway,” said Thelman, adding that they weren’t sure if they would keep single stream.

Piles of single stream recycling at the Monticello transfer station.

From the transfer station, the recycling is trucked to get further sorted at Hudson Baylor in Beacon.

“It’s cost-effective to do single-stream,” said Thelman, citing that it’s easier for residents and also alleviates strain on the county’s resources, cutting back on staffing costs and emissions. 

“When you put your recycling in a container [at another Sullivan County transfer station], it gets picked up by a truck, and that truck comes here,” said Thelman. 

As we walk through the transfer station building, a truck comes from Highland, carting one of the massive, metal single-stream recycling bins. This particular bin has a compacting system that allows it to fit more recycling than a normal container, lessening the amount of trips needed between transfer stations. It opens the back of the green metal bin door to loudly dump a line of recyclables the length of a tractor-trailer. 

“From Highland, we do this once a week or once every other week,” Thelman said. 

When it is a county-owned truck doing the transferring, the transport costs are covered, but when it’s a commercial hauler the county has to pay per ton. Due to the change to single stream, “we are now freeing up time for our guys to bring one of these tractor trailers and haul our own recycling to Beacon, because we have more time in the day. We just started hauling to Beacon ourselves about a year ago,” said Thelman.

In the summer, due to the seasonal influx in population, the county needs to hire outside haulers. Trucks are loaded with trash and recycling every day. “During the summer we probably send out 20 tractor trailers a day,” said Thelman. 

Items such as this styrofoam egg carton are not recyclable, and will result in a contamination fee at the next stage of recycling.

Among the recyclables on the transfer station floor are items that cannot be recycled, such as styrofoam egg cartons and a bag of cat food. When non-recyclables are tossed into the recycling, they incur a cost at the next station in the recycling process. At Hudson Baylor, the single-stream recycling is separated mechanically and then hand-sorted by dozens of workers. Non-recyclable items are hand-picked from long conveyor belts, and there are contamination fees for each piece. Those fees are ultimately paid for with taxpayer dollars.

“The styrofoam and such will get sorted out at that facility, and we will get charged the price of garbage, which is more expensive than recycling,” explained Thelman.

She referred to “wish-cycling,” in which people toss an item into their recycling in the hope it will be recyclable, when in reality it is not. “When you put it in recycling just because you want it to be recycling, it’s actually just causing a bigger burden in the end,” she said.

Thelman pointed to a greasy pizza box lid in the recyclables. It would need to be thrown out. She recommended ripping off the greasy part and recycling the other half of the box if it is free from grease.

Items made of more than one material also have a hard time being sorted at recycling facilities. 

“Chances are if something is made of more than one material it’s not going to go through, because it won’t know where to separate to,” said Thelman. 

She gave the example of a Quaker Oats tin. It’s a product made of more than one material: there is a metal ring at the bottom, a cardboard middle and a plastic lid. “But you can separate it,” Thelman said. Just peel apart the different materials so that they get recycled. “You should also remove the lids from all of your containers,” she added.

According to Beyond Plastics, the success of plastic recycling in 2021 was about six percent, meaning only six percent of all “recycled” plastics were actually re-made into new materials. Many plastics remain unrecyclable, such as single-use straws. Paper, glass and aluminum recycling rates are much higher; the recycling rate for paper, for example, is upwards of 66 percent. 

Thelman said their recycling program accepts plastics that are “food-grade containers with the triangle 1-7. If it’s bigger than five gallons, it does not get processed.” She pointed out a large plastic tote someone threw in the recycling. It will wind up in the garbage.

Thelman has been in her current role for about a year and a half, and wants to expand recycling programs.

“Everything costs money, and everything goes through a legislator,” she said, explaining how more people-power and money could improve programs. “I want to offer more recycling, but there’s a lot of cost to everything. People call about vegetable oil and things they don’t want to throw away and shouldn’t have to. We should be able to recycle it, but we’re just not there yet. I understand why we’re not there yet, but we need to be.”

Mark Witkowski, deputy commissioner of public works, highlights some of the behind-the-scenes costs of operating a transfer station.

“You’ve got to buy the truck, buy the fuel, put a guy in the truck. We’ve got a skid steer, lights, the cost of the building, wire for the baling machine, maintenance for the machine,” he said. Plus there’s the impact on the roads, and emissions from trucks. 

“Our goal is not to cost the taxpayers money,” Witkowski said. “The more we can recycle and push materials in a more environmentally friendly direction, the better.”

The county also has a new electronics recycling policy as of last September.

“TVs used to be thrown on the side of the road,” said Witkowski. It used to cost $15 to recycle one at the dump. Now, due to changes in manufacturer responsibility policies, electronic producers such as Sony need to cover costs of recycling. 

“If we aren’t charged [to recycle the electronics], we can’t charge, “said Thelman, making electronic recycling free of cost to Sullivan County residents. 

Turning food into compost

The county-wide composting, new last year, is an example of a project that has been long in the making. Thelman’s predecessor began working on it in 2017. Years of permits, registrations, and paperwork have brought the program to life in 2023.

 “There’s a lot behind it,” said Thelman. “We can’t just say we’re going to collect a food pile here, which is fair; the DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) wants to make sure everything is regulated and we’re doing it the right way.” That involves environmental impact assessments and careful management of any wastewater.

Now, Sullivan County residents can bring all of their food scraps—including meat and dairy, which traditionally don’t go into an at-home compost system—to a designated transfer station container. Once a week, these green bins are picked up and transported to Ulster County, where Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency (UCRRA) turns the food scraps into compost. UCRAA charges $20 per ton of food scraps, and sells the finished compost for $30 per ton, or $5 per cubic foot bagged.

Composting food scraps is a net win. It reduces methane emissions from landfills by diverting the food waste to compost; according to the UCRRA website, food waste makes up 22 percent of material buried in landfills. It also provides a potential source of revenue by selling finished compost and reduces costs for consumers, since residents can dispose of all their food waste for free at county transfer stations, rather than paying for it to be disposed of in the trash. 

Exporting food scraps is significantly cheaper than throwing them in the garbage. Last month, Sullivan County paid $95 per ton to get rid of garbage; $51 per ton to rid of single-stream recycling; and only $20 per ton to rid of food scraps.

Many people in the area already compost at home, Thelman said, but for those who don’t and for those who “don’t have the property or don’t want to attract animals, they’re very excited about the program.”

Additionally, a New York State law mandates that if a commercial facility is within 25 miles of a composting plant, it is required to compost its food scraps. A commercial compost operation in Monticello could mean dozens of businesses, including large ones like Walmart and ShopRite, would need to bring their food scraps to the Monticello food scrap recycling program. Not only does that create profit for the county, but it also prevents a tremendous amount of methane from going into the atmosphere.

Thelman’s vision is to create a composting plant at the Monticello transfer station, where residents could not only bring their food scraps, but could also buy compost to use in their gardens and yards. 

“This is the pilot, where we start collecting it and transporting it out. But assuming our new legislature is still on board, this year I plan to start filling out paperwork to apply for funding to build a compost facility here,” she said.

The food scrap recycling program has given out 300 free containers for residents to collect their food scraps at home in order to bring them to the transfer stations. One hundred bins are still free and available for food recycling. 

For clarification about what should or shouldn’t go in their recycling bin, email recycling@sullivanny.us, follow Sullivan County NY Recycles on Facebook, or call 845/807-0291, or ask a local transfer station attendant. 

“Public education is the most important thing in making sure we divert as much as we can from landfills,” Thelman said.

Environmental actions you can take

• Avoid single-use plastics—bring reusable cups and straws
• Ensure glass, metal and plastics are clean before recycling
• Rip off greasy pizza lids and recycle only the clean cardboard
• Make sure only recyclable items are in your recycling (no foam, no plastic containers larger than five gallons, no plastic bags or items made of multiple materials) 
• Pay attention to your legislators or commissioners, and monitor whether their environmental policies align with what you’d like to see
• If you’re in Sullivan County, compost all your food scraps with the food scrap recycling program