Sally Lohman Sally Lohman, Municipal Waste Planning Chief, and Evelyn D Elia, Recycling Education Specialist, both who are from the DEP Central Office spent some time discussing the future of on-line grant applications for the County Recycling Coordinators. Joanne Shafer Joanne Shafer, Centre County Recycling Coordinator, on behalf of John Frederick, PROP Executive Director, offered comments on PROP s recent testimony to the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee. The testimony was in relation to a proposed yard waste ban at Pennsylvania landfills. Many communities in Pennsylvania have no convenient access to yard waste processing facilities. Some mandated communities have ignored the spirit, if not the letter, of the law regarding yard waste collection.
Collections are infrequent, public notice is sub-par, or composting is done poorly.
Landfills need some organics to promote decomposition. A lively discussion among roundtable participants ensued. The consensus of the group being that more data is needed from the Waste Characterization Study proposed by DEP before any further type of yard waste ban is explored. Mike Hnatin Mike Hnatin, Lycoming County Resource Management Engineer and Tom DiStefano, Bucknell University Professor, addressed the group on the in-vessel composting research being done for a possible future waste processing program to be utilized at the Lycoming County Landfill. Mike and Tom went through a slide presentation on anaerobic in-vessel composting and reported on the early bench top experiments conducted by Bucknell University.