Brick Gets $100K From County Recycling Fund

Ocean County officials are paying taxpayers another dividend from an unlikely source, the county’s mutual fund of garbage.

“We haven’t missed a dividend payment since we’ve been in business,’’ said Freeholder James F. Lacey of the county’s recycling program that cashed in for a record sum during the first six months of the year.

They are sending a record $917,436 back to local governments based on the amount of things each town recycled. More than 35,300 tons of what once was bound for dumps in the county were sent for reuse since January.

That is after the county took a share of the money to continue running the massive materials processing center in Lakewood that readies everything from broken bottles to aluminum for the market.

Recycling became the chief waste disposal strategy of county officials in the late 1980s, when voters rejected plans for a massive trash incinerator in Waretown about the time the state Department of Environmental Protection was closing but one of the landfills in the county.

The recycling effort is designed to prolong the life of that private dump, the Ocean County Landfill in Manchester Township, by diverting what can be reused to markets all over the world.

Local governments pay to dump their waste there. The first six months of recycling this year cut the landfill tab to local governments by $2.5 million, according to Lacey.

Over the life of the recycling program he said the dumping fee savings are $95 million.

Changes in how materials are sold to recyclers mean more money, Lacey said. Buying a baler to compress paper and cardboard upped the per ton price being paid to the county for cardboard by $34 a ton, to $212.

Aluminum is bringing $1,453-a-ton, newspapers $181-a-ton, and tin cans $301-a-ton.

“These were not a busiest months,’’ for recycling, he said of the period ending June 30.  The summer months produce more recyclables and if the market for them remains strong, could produce an even bigger dividend at the end of the year.

Checks are in the mail to communities for their recycling revenue sharing, he said.

Toms River will get one for $183,806, Lakewood $140,141, and Brick $100,222.

Berkeley is in line for $48,109, Lacey for $48,077, Manchester for $39,362, Barnegat for $31,089, Point Pleasant for $31,689, and Point Beach $1l,854.