It pays to recycle. The state Department of Environmental Protection has announced that both towns will be recipients of part of $14.3 million in grants distributed to municipalities this year.
Plainsboro is slated to receive $33,902 and West Windsor will get $58,596. The grants are based on the towns’ 2016 recycling performance, according to a DEP news release.
The recycling tonnage grants are awarded through the state’s Recycling Enhancement Act and are funded through a $3 per-ton surcharge on trash disposed at solid waste facilities statewide. The DEP then allocates that money back to municipalities based on how much recycling each community reports accomplishing during a particular calendar year.
The grants are to be used to help improve a community’s recycling rate, either by funding a recycling coordinator position, sponsoring household hazardous waste collection events, providing recycling receptacles and pickup in public places, maintaining leaf composting operations, doing educational outreach about the importance of recycling or implementing curbside recycling pickup programs.
For calendar year 2016, the most recent year for which data is available, New Jersey generated 9.7 million tons of municipal solid waste, with 4.26 million tons recycled and 5.4 million tons disposed. This resulted in a slight increase in the recycling rate, to 44 percent, from the year prior. New Jersey’s recycling rate exceeds the national recycling rate average of 34 percent, but is below the state’s recycling goal of 50 percent.
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