Canton has work to do on waste reduction, recycling

When it comes to the dual environmental aims of waste reduction and responsible recycling, the Canton community needs to step up its game.

That was the key takeaway from a recent public presentation hosted by the town’s Sustainability Committee in coordination with state and industry leaders.

According to Missy Hollenback, MassDEP’s municipal assistance coordinator for Southeast District 2 and one of the evening’s featured speakers, the latest available data places Canton in the “top third” of Massachusetts communities in terms of trash discarded — an average of over 1,760 pounds per household in 2023 (Canton did not supply data to MassDEP in 2024.)

All told, Hollenback said the commonwealth of Massachusetts produces over 6 million tons of trash per year, roughly half of which gets sent to in-state waste energy incinerators, which she said are currently operating at capacity and approaching the end of their life cycles. Another .5 million tons goes to the five remaining landfills in the state, while the remaining 2.7 million tons is diverted out of state by railcar.

“It doesn’t take much to totally disrupt the flow of trash removal,” noted Hollenback, citing the recent Teamsters strike against Republic Services (the town of Canton’s trash hauler) as one factor, along with catastrophic weather and other states no longer accepting the state’s trash.

Even the in-state landfills, she said, are rapidly approaching maximum capacity, with only two of the five projected to still be open by 2030. “Basically, it’s not looking good for us,” noted Hollenback.

While the situation does indeed seem dire, she said there are steps that all communities and households can take that would go a long way toward reducing the amount of trash that gets discarded.

“We can reduce our trash — we can do it,” she said. “But it really starts with us all thinking about what we buy, how it’s made, and what happens at the end of the life cycle.”

Thanks to a state grant from MassDEP’s Recycling Dividends Program, Hollenback said she will be personally working with Canton leaders over the coming months to provide technical assistance on waste reduction and recycling.

One suggested starting point, she said, is for the Sustainability Committee to identify a goal, and then she would work with town leaders to help achieve it, drawing from resources available through MassDEP such as the state’s Solid Waste Master Plan.

Updated every 10 years, the master plan includes practical steps for reducing trash tonnage, and among them, said Hollenback, are bans on items that can be thrown in the trash, the most recent examples in Massachusetts being textiles and mattresses.

Hollenback outlined a number of other waste reduction methods using an expanded framework called the 7 R’s — in addition to the familiar 3 R’s of reduce, reuse, recycle, it also includes rethink, refuse, repair and rot (composting). Of all the seven actions, she said that “rethink” has been shown to be the most impactful, involving a shifting of the “buy-use-toss paradigm to a more thoughtful approach.” Also highly effective, she said, is “refuse” — encouraging residents to “say ‘no’ to excess packaging, single-use items, etc.”

On the topic of recycling, Hollenback strongly encouraged residents to utilize the resources available at recyclesmartma.org, which helps to educate residents about what can and cannot be placed in their town-issued recycling receptacles.

Hollenback said a personal goal of hers during her work with the Canton community will center on the elimination of plastic bags in recycling bins, which are strictly prohibited because they become tangled in the equipment at the material recovery facilities (MRF’s) and end up costing communities on the back end.

The evening’s other featured speaker, Brendan Farrell, manages the MRF in Avon that processes Canton’s household recyclables, and he noted that Canton is on the “bad end” compared to other neighboring communities in terms of the percentage of trash that gets tossed in the recycle bins.

Based on its most recent audit, Farrell said that more than 20 percent of recyclables from Canton that get tipped at his facility is actually trash, compared to the plant average of roughly 12 percent. During the audit, he said they found items such as fans, pieces of cut-up foam from a mattress, a bed frame, a rug, and numerous bagged materials.

Farrell explained that anything that comes into the plant in plastic bags — even if it contains recyclable materials — gets discarded as trash, due to the volume of material they must process and the risks associated with opening a bag containing unknown items.

Farrell said the biggest challenge that MRF’s face stems from residents engaging in “wish-cycling,” which is defined as the “well-intentioned but harmful act of placing non-recyclable items into a recycling bin with the hope that they will somehow be recycled.”

He urged residents to avoid recycling any “wrappable” materials — items that can get caught in the equipment such as plastic bags, holiday lights, hoses and textiles.

Other items, he said, can pose serious safety and fire hazards, such as materials with bodily fluids (diapers and puppy pads being common examples), medical needles and propane tanks. Arguably their biggest headache and biggest fear, according to Farrell, are batteries, particularly lithium-ion batteries, which can explode when crushed.

Farrell noted that in July of 2024, one of these unwanted items ignited a major fire at the Avon plant, which resulted in significant damage to the facility’s equipment, roofing, electrical and communication systems and led to a complete shutdown for six weeks.

The bottom line, said Farrell, is that they want to encourage people to recycle as much as possible, but it has to be the “right materials.”

Hollenback reiterated the benefits of accessing recyclesmartma.org and she encouraged anyone with questions to contact her at 508-748-5658 or mhollenback@taunton-ma.gov. The Sustainability Committee is also looking for more people to get involved and urged those who are interested to reach out to Town Hall.

To view a recording of the recent presentation, visit the Canton Community TV’s website at www.cantoncommunitytv.org.

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Posted by Jay Turner on Oct 10 2025. Filed under Features. Both comments and pings are currently closed.