Understanding How Recycling Works
Since its increase in popularity in the 1970s, the waste management concepts of reduce, reuse, and recycle have become commonplace in the average American’s verbiage. What still deceives many is how recycling works, beyond placing certain materials into a blue or green bin. In this article, Jefferson Recycling will explore the different types of recycling facilities and highlight exemptions to New Jersey recycling permits.
Class A Recycling Facility
New Jersey recycling facilities that have a Class “A” designation are responsible for the most common types of recyclable materials. These include glass, paper, cardboard, and plastic. It also includes metal, so any junkyard in New Jersey is required to have a Class A Recycling Approval as well. Metal processing is regulated more stringently than other class A recycling materials. One required common trait for all of these materials is that they are all non-putrescible. In other words, they will not rot.
Class B Recycling Facility
Class B Recycling facilities handle what most people would consider construction and demolition materials. These materials include non-treated wood, trees, stumps, brush material, and leaves. It also includes clean concrete, brick, blocks, masonry, asphalt, and non-hazardous petroleum-contaminated soil (to be considered non-hazardous, the petroleum levels must be less than 30,000 parts per million).
Jefferson Recycling is a class B recycling facility that handles most, but not all, of these materials. Currently, it does not handle asphalt and dirt. It also does not handle any loads that originated from NJDEP Oversight Projects.
Class C Recycling Facility
After class A recycling facilities, class C is perhaps the easiest to recall. That’s because you can connect the “C” to compost. All materials in these facilities are compostable, whether it’s food matter, such as a banana peel, or plant matter, such as grass or leaves.
Both class B recycling facilities and class C handle leaves, but the difference lies in what occurs after the materials reach the facility. The class C materials are typically laid out and left to compost over time. At a class B recycling facility, the leaves are processed through machines such as a wood chipper.
Class D Recycling Facility
If a recyclable material doesn’t fall into the previous categories, it’s going to be handled in a class D recycling facility. This makes Class D facilities a little more complicated. Materials that might be found in this facility include antifreeze, used oils, latex paints, light bulbs, batteries, consumer electronics, and equipment containing mercury.
Recycling Facility Exemptions
New Jersey has established a variety of rules and regulations within their recycling programs to maintain oversight and proper waste management within the state. They have, however, established recycling exemptions that allow the processing of certain materials without the same requirements of permits and approvals. These exemptions exist for a wide variety of materials but require a very narrow set of qualifiers.
One example of a recycling exemption is for construction companies to reuse concrete, asphalt, brick and block. Any construction company can store, process, and transfer the materials, as long as:
- The company is the sole generator of the material. So, if Jefferson Recycling is hired for onsite crushing, it is the generator of the material, not the construction company.
- The material is stored safely. This means no runoff, leakage or seepage from the storage area into or onto the ground.
- The company is the sole user of the end product. You cannot sell any processed material under this exemption.
- The processed material can be stored on-site for only one year.
Jefferson Recycling is New Jersey’s Leader in Construction and Demolition Recycling
Jefferson Recycling is well versed in all class b recycling requirements and methods of reuse. If you are in need of northern New Jersey recycling, demolition, dumpster services, or onsite crushing, contact us today.