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On one of the grittiest patches of industrial Northwest Portland, Terrell Garrett handles the kind of recycling you won't see at Burgerville or in an episode of Portlandia.
More than 100 trucks rumble into Garrett's Greenway Recycling each day, laden with what's left when buildings get demolished: waste wood, sheetrock, roofing and other junk. Garrett's 19 employees run that debris through a vibrating series of conveyor belts, blowers and separators, and a "shaker screen" that separates the smallest pieces, leaving a pile of gravel-sized rubble.
You won't find newspapers, aluminum cans or empty bottles here. Those household recyclables go to daintier facilities.
Greenway looks more like a dump than a recycling facility. But Metro, the regional government that regulates solid waste disposal, has for four years defined the rubble Greenway sifts from construction debris as recycling, because it's reused to cover landfills.
That classification is a big deal—because it means the debris isn't taxed.
But that's about to change.
Metro announced earlier this month it wants to redefine that material as garbage. The redefinition will cost Garrett and other recyclers about $30 a ton—that's the tax that Metro charges on garbage.
The proposed rule changes Metro will present to the public Aug. 20 could actually reduce the region's recycling rate, currently at its highest level ever.
Garrett and others say the changes Metro is proposing contradict the agency's mission. He says Metro is bankrolling the more popular forms of recycling—and filling its coffers—by throwing his company out with the trash.
"This is just a money grab for Metro," Garrett says. "That's all it's about—and as far as they are concerned, damn the recycling rate."
Ken Ray, a Metro spokesman, disagrees. He says the reclassification is overdue, in line with Metro's principles and part of larger changes the agency is proposing to increase recycling.
He says the landfill cover Greenway produces from construction waste has been misclassified and should be treated—and taxed—like all the other material that ends up in a landfill.
"It's garbage when it goes through the shaker screen," Ray says, "and it needs to be taxed as garbage."
Metro wears multiple hardhats in the solid-waste world.
The regional government sets waste policy for three Portland-area counties. It competes in the industry as the operator of two large transfer stations—also known as dumps. And it acts as the industry's cop.
All of these functions cost money. Metro raises it by taxing garbage—its single largest source of revenue.
But Metro is a victim of its own success. It has so effectively persuaded individuals and companies to recycle that garbage output per capita—Metro's lifeblood—has plunged.
The average person in the region produced 1,102 pounds of garbage in 2013, state figures show. That may sound like a lot, but garbage per capita is actually in steady decline, falling 36 percent since its recent high watermark in 2006.
Metro is currently rethinking how the region handles waste, preparing for the expiration of the agency's long-term landfill contracts, which expire in 2019.
On Aug. 6, the agency released a series of proposals it says will bring greater transparency and efficiency to the solid-waste system.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency requires that landfill operators cover the "working face" of their landfills at the end of each work day with the equivalent of six inches of soil. The policy is designed to reduce vermin and blowing garbage.
Some landfills use petroleum-contaminated soil. Others use what's called "auto-shredder fluff," which is the plastic, upholstery and other non-metal material removed from junk cars when they are scrapped.
And some landfills use what are called "shaker-screen fines"—the granular construction debris Greenway produces.
Garrett says his plant will generate nearly 9,000 tons of that material this year. He's able to collect that much reusable debris from the waste stream because he invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in a separating system.
If Metro reclassifies the material that system recovers as garbage, he'll have to pay $30 a ton to dispose of it, an annual cost of $270,000. That's a lot for a company that Garrett says had about $5 million in total sales last year.
Since Oregon began recycling in earnest in the early 1980s, fees on garbage have subsidized recycling.
Some industry veterans say it's time to rethink that relationship now that recycling is ingrained in consumer behavior and per capita garbage is declining.
"For many years, the funding of Metro and municipal environmental organizations have been on the backs of the disposal of waste in landfills," says Dean Large of Waste Connections, which operates landfills in Wasco and Umatilla counties. "They recognized that is an unsustainable model, but don't have the nerve to change the message to the constituents that recycling isn't really free."
Ray, the Metro spokesman, acknowledges that increased recycling will continue to limit garbage revenues in the future but says that's not why Metro is making changes.
"We are certainly mindful that people throwing away less will have a long-term impact," Ray says. "And we are certainly going to be looking at whether our approach is sustainable over the long term."
Garrett says redefining as garbage about 12,000 tons of shaker fines—the total he and others produce locally each year—is anything but sustainable.
âThis is not about us,â Garrett says. âThis is about solving a revenue problem, and they are doing it the wrong way.â
WWeek 2015