Congrats to Teton Valley Community Recycling

Press Release- Nov. 8, 2008- Teton Valley Community Recycling

This year has marked a giant leap forward in Teton County Waste Management. No doubt we have all had frustrating and confusing moments at the new transfer station, but Terra Firma Organics (TFO), Teton Valley Community Recycling (TVCR) and Teton County (TC) staffers, have managed to provide a way for Teton County residents to separate their waste into over 12 different sorted categories for re-use and recycling and saved over $108,400 in the process.

Thanks to all of you who sorted your garbage and waited in line, we have been able to gather some impressive information. Your efforts have proven the value of an integrated community waste center whose guiding principle is resource recovery and recycling. While we suffered some setbacks due to lack of sheltered storage and tight funds, we saw an overall gain from 5% diversion last year to a 20% diversion this year, including lots of organic material that had never been recovered before.


We fully expect to double that once we are able to develop an operation inside the shelter of the white tent and will have some county operational support. By saving taxpayers $108,000 we think TVCR and Terra Firma have earned the county's support.

Here's the facts:

It costs our county $93 per ton to transfer our unsorted garbage to Mud Lake but only $45 per ton to manage sorted waste.

Teton County businesses and residents generate over 1000 tons per month. If we had simply trucked it all out, unsorted it would have cost the county about $93,000 per month.
Terra Firma helped lower those costs by thinking through alternative uses and economical means of diverting materials out of the transfer process.

· Teton County generated 1,000 tons per month, 12,000 tons a year

· @ $93 per ton to transfer the annual cost would have been $1,116,000

· TFO was able to reduce the amount of garbage that had to be trucked out by about 20% - diverting about 2,400 tons of sorted waste through recycling, re-using, chipping, composting etc.

Managing sorted materials costs the county an average of $45 – a full 50% less than trucking. So, waste reduction, recovery and recycling provided a real saving of $108,000 during this first year. Imaginehow much better once we have a building, a baler, storage and are able to get on site composting going!!!