Nearly 300 groups, with more than 2,600 participants, are registered to comb Mountain State main and back roads, picking up tons of trash.
Saturday’s statewide Adopt-A Highway spring cleaning should make our country roads much less cluttered. Nearly 300 groups, with more than 2,600 participants, are registered to comb Mountain State main and back roads, picking up tons of trash.
The annual spring cleanup is hosted by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Division of Highways.
Terry Fletcher, the chief communications officer for the DEP, said volunteers will be provided with all necessary protective gear and pick up materials.
Fletcher said DEP is hoping to recruit more Adopt-A-Highway groups and members with the statewide event.
“We have a Youth Environmental Program that does a really great job with helping to promote this as well,” Fletcher said. “They’re talking to school groups and students across the state about ways they can join in and pitch in to help clean up their communities.”
Fletcher said tossed out trash is not just an eyesore – it’s an environmental hazard and a physical danger.
”This stuff that you throw out of your car, it’s gonna find its way into a stream,” he said. “It’s gonna find its way into people’s yards and into our forests, stuff that can cause all kinds of environmental issues and problems.”
Fletcher said a spring cleanup goal is to surpass the 68,000 pounds of trash removed from more than 800 miles of roadway last year.
Click here for information on how to get involved.
Today, most of our trash ends up in landfills. In the United States, we produce more than 200 million tons of trash every single year. But what if we could turn some of that trash into fuel? Well, it turns out a large portion of Berkeley, Jefferson, and Morgan County residents’ garbage is being turned into fuel as we speak – even if they may not realize it.
Emily Dyson opens a gallon sized Ziploc bag full of soft, confetti like material. It has no smell, and it looks kind of like colorful, shredded fabric. This stuff was garbage, but now it’s been broken down, cleaned and can be used as a fuel source.
Dyson is the Director of Science Research and Development, Director of Safety, and formerly the Construction Manager at Entsorga West Virginia – a new waste-to-energy facility located in Martinsburg.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Emily Dyson, Director of Science Research and Development at Entsorga West Virginia.
There are similar efforts to turn trash into energy elsewhere in the United States, but Entsorga West Virginia is the first in the country to use a unique technology called HEBioT, or high-efficiency biological treatment. It speeds up the process – turning trash to fuel in less than three weeks.
Entsorga’s technology senses and separates garbage to collect bio-mass, plastics and other carbon based materials. Then, through the use of large fans and mulch, yes mulch, the garbage is cleaned, composted, then separated and shredded, and can then be used as fuel.
Entsorga is based in Italy with 14 locations around the world. Its West Virginia plant is the first Entsorga facility in North America. It employs 14 full-time employees, ranging in salaries from $13 to $25 an hour. 13 of the 14 employees are West Virginia residents.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Apple Valley Waste’s garbage trucks drive up to these doors and are emptied inside. The doors are specially sealed to contain much of the garbage smells within the facility. The ladybug is Entsorga’s mascot.
Dyson said Entsorga’s technology will solve both waste and fuel problems but is only one piece of the puzzle.
“From a waste perspective, there’s not going to be one technology that’s going to solve the waste problems of the U.S. From a fuel perspective, there’s not going to be one fuel, one power source that’s going to fix the energy issues that we face here, but you might as well be using waste, because that’s a definite recyclable commodity. Everybody makes waste,” she said.
Dyson said nearly 80 percent of garbage that comes to Entsorga will be diverted from a landfill, and at least half of that will be turned into fuel – fuel that will be used at a local cement factory in Berkeley County. Entsorga’s fuel will also replace a portion of coal used there.
“It burns cleaner than coal. The cement plant will use up to 30 percent offset, or supplement of their coal,” she explained.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
This is what garbage becomes after the Entsorga process. This confetti-like material can be burned as a fuel source. It’s been shredded, cleaned and is safe to touch.
Entsorga West Virginia opened its doors in March 2019, and it’s having a considerable effect on lessening the amount of garbage going into a landfill.
Clint Hogbin, Chairman of the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority, and who invited Entsorga to locate in West Virginia, said, in the month of April, the facility saw more than 1,000 tons of waste that either became fuel or was recycled at the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority.
“That’s an immediate 10 percent landfill reduction in [Entsorga’s] first month; for the entire Eastern Panhandle,” Hogbin said. “If you add all the waste stream of the Eastern Panhandle, that’s in their first month; its immediate 10 percent landfill reduction.”
But, let’s back up. How does garbage become the fluffy stuff in that Ziploc bag? Here’s how it works…
Residents in Berkeley, Jefferson, and Morgan Counties take their garbage out to the curb once a week, like anywhere else. But only Apple Valley Waste customers see their trash sent to Entsorga.
The Entsorga facility sits just behind the Solid Waste Authority on 12 acres of land.
The garbage trucks are weighed, and then the contents are emptied into the Entsorga building.
After the trash is dropped off, Entsorga’s HEBioT technology begins its work. There’s no human intervention in the Entsorga process, just the employees who operate the machines and watch the monitors.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Garbage is spun inside a trommel to help sort out the various items.
A large screen shows multiple camera views of the machines at work — spinning, cleaning, or shredding the garbage.
Dyson said the waste will sit in what’s called the bio-oxidation hall for a couple weeks, while a large fan system sucks and blows air through the ventilation system.
“And that is what accelerates that composting because we’re drying that material out fast. What normally takes three to nine months, we’re doing in that 10 to 14, 16 days,” she said.
Mulch plays a big part of the ventilation process by absorbing and breaking down the garbage smells. It helps to clean and compost the trash that’ll eventually become fuel.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Mulch and large fans help to clean and compost the garbage as it is processed into fuel.
But getting Entsorga to locate in West Virginia has not been without its struggles. It took ten years to get all the permits cleared – in part because the facility was a brand new thing for the state.
And there was also some pushback from community members.
“The first public hearing, there was a lot of people, there was a lot of questions,” Dyson explained.
She said most of the concerns came from a lack of understanding about how the technology works.
“It’s hard to wrap your head around [the technology] unless you see it,” she said.
There was also some opposition by landfill companies.
“If you’re a landfill; if you’re a facility that’s going to lose a lot of intake because of this facility, you might be upset, and you might get involved and slow it down. So, we had some of that,” Clint Hogbin said.
Hogbin said the Eastern Panhandle needed a waste-to-energy facility, simply because of the rate at which the area is growing – to find an alternative to landfilling. And he said he hopes Entsorga West Virginia will be an example for the rest of the country.
“I’m hoping those solid waste decision makers will come to Martinsburg, visit the facility, and I’m hoping in that way, the ripple effect would be that West Virginia changes the direction of management of solid waste,” Hogbin said. “It might be nice to be first at something.”
Entsorga West Virginia’s fuel product is being utilized by one local cement plant in Martinsburg called Argos. Argos is also an Italian company.
But both Hogbin and Dyson say there are other cement companies who may contract with them in the future, and there’s the possibility that other companies may have an interest in the product.
Lawmakers in the House have approved a bill that would increase the penalties for littering in the state.
Littering on public or private property in West Virginia is already a misdemeanor, but House Bill 2303 increases the fines and community service hours associated with it.
Fines in the bill are subject to the amount of trash a person disposes of improperly and are decided by a judge. They range from 100 to ten thousand dollars. The maximum amount of community service hours also increases in the bill to 200 hours, with a minimum of 8 required.
Delegate Rupie Phillips of Logan County, the only Independent member of the state Legislature, is the lead sponsor of the littering bill. He said he feels the penalties are reasonable, but wishes they were even stronger.
“If I was in committee, I woulda stood stronger on a stiffer bottom dollar than where they went,” Phillips noted, “but like I said, we got a bill out, and it raised; the community service I mean, to go from just a few hours to possible 100 hours or possible 200 hours, I mean, just whatever. It’s just like I said, let’s just make West Virginia shine.”
A European method for converting garbage to fuel is coming to West Virginia. The Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority has signed an agreement to lease part of its property to the Italian company Entsorga. The company will build a $19 million facility there.
The mixed waste resource recovery facility will sit on 12 acres next to the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority’s Grapevine Rd. recycling center.
“Entsorga has a patented technology where waste that’s picked up at the curb and normally would be taken to the landfill is redirected to a building,” Clint Hogbin, BCSWA chairman, said.
The garbage is then sorted and processed into a product that can be burned like coal and natural gas to create BTU’s. According to Entsorga’s web site the product is a clean-burning alternative that large energy consumers like steel mills, power plants and cement plants can use in place of or with fossil fuels.
Hogbin estimates the mixed waste resource recovery facility will reduce the amount of trash from Berkeley, Jefferson and Morgan counties sent to the landfill by 65 to 75 percent.
Hogbin said the facility will separate out recyclables and items that won’t generate high BTU’s, things like glass bottles and aluminum cans.
“What are left after those items that are pulled out are the items that are cleaned, dried and shredded and ready to be used as a substitute to coal,” he said.
Hogbin said Entsorga is coming to Berkeley County because there are several locations within a couple hundred miles where the fuel can be sold, including the Italian-owned ESSROC cement plant in Martinsburg, which already burns coal.
Hogbin said the Entsorga facility will employ up to nine people and there will be additional spinoff jobs once it’s open.
Hogbin hopes the new facility will demonstrate it’s possible to find new ways to deal with garbage and everything doesn’t have to go to a landfill. Entsorga plans to begin building sometime in the spring or summer.
