CRRA Opens Regional Recycling Facility
Governor Rell Cuts Ribbon, Officially Launches Expanded Recycling for 70 Cities and Towns

Governor M. Jodi Rell chats with students from Colebrook Consolidated School and Anna Reynolds School in Newington, who used recycled paper to make a ribbon especially for the occasion. Looking on is Phillup D. Bag.

HARTFORD, Conn. – Recycling has always been a good idea. For 70 cities and towns, it’s now a whole lot better.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell officially opened the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority’s new Mid-Connecticut Project regional recycling facility this morning. To signify the opening, she cut a ribbon made of recycled paper by area school children.

The new facility allows Mid-Connecticut Project towns to recycle a wider assortment of items. New items now being recycled in these towns are boxboard, oversized glass and metal containers, aerosol cans and junk mail. (Click here for a town-by-town recycling guide.)

“One thing that we all can do to help the environment is to recycle,” Gov. Rell said.. “Our state has established very ambitious recycling goals and seeing CRRA’s new Hartford facility makes me confident that we will reach those goals.”

The new facility, located at 211 Murphy Road, was designed and built by FCR, Inc., a subsidiary of Casella Waste Systems, Inc., at a cost of $6 million. Under FCR’s agreement with CRRA, FCR paid the entire cost of the project. CRRA also accepts recyclables from member towns at no cost; compared with paying $69 per ton to get rid of trash, Mid-Connecticut towns saved almost $4.3 million by recycling in the last fiscal year.

“This new state-of-the-art facility is a testament to the effectiveness of curbside recycling,” said Thomas D. Kirk, CRRA president. “FCR was willing to make this significant investment because they reasonably expect to process and sell enough bottles, cans, newspapers and other commodities to recoup their investment.”

“FCR is delighted to help CRRA and Connecticut increase recycling by building and operating this recycling center,” said Sean P. Duffy, FCR president. “Not only can we accept more types of recyclables, when we’re running at full capacity we will bring 30 or more additional jobs to Hartford as well.”

Residents of Mid-Connecticut municipalities can now recycle the following items either at curbside or their town drop-off-center:

• Aluminum cans
• Steel cans, including aerosol cans
• Glass bottles and jars
• Bottles and jars made of plastics #1 and #2 up to three gallons in size
• Aseptic packages (juice boxes, milk cartons)
• Newspapers
• Mixed paper (i.e. junk mail, magazines, catalogs, home computer printouts)
• Corrugated cardboard
• Boxboard (also known as chipboard, i.e., cereal boxes, shoe boxes, non-corrugated pizza boxes, shirt cardboard)

Instructions on how to prepare these items for recycling is available at CRRA’s on-line recycling guide.

The new facility replaces a containers-only recycling facility that had been at the Murphy Road location since 1992. In January, CRRA received a permit from the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection to consolidate its paper and cardboard recycling operations with the container processing.

The new facility’s permitted capacity is 55,000 tons of containers per year and 100,100 tons of paper and cardboard per year. FCR, which also operates the facility, currently employs 32 people there; when it reaches permitted capacity, as many as 66 people will work there.

At Thursday’s grand opening, Gov. Rell cut a ribbon made from recycled paper by children from the Colebrook Consolidated School and Anna Reynolds School in Newington. The children, with the help of Phillup D. Bag, CRRA’s recycling mascot, then placed the ribbon in a recycling bin.

The Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority is a quasi-public agency whose mission is to work for – and in – the best interests of the municipalities of the state of Connecticut. CRRA’s new board of directors and new management team develop and implement environmentally sound solutions and best practices for solid waste disposal and recycling management on behalf of municipalities. CRRA’s four solid waste projects serve 118 Connecticut cities and towns. CRRA also runs environmental and recycling educational programs through its Trash Museum in Hartford and Children’s Garbage Museum in Stratford. For more information about CRRA and its activities, visit http://www.crra.org.

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Gov. M. Jodi Rell meets Phillup D. Bag, CRRA's recycling expert, at the grand opening of the new Mid-Connecticut Project Regional Recycling Facility in Hartford May 17, 2007.