Solid waste generated in Massachusetts may have several destinations before it is ultimately disposed, recycled or reused, as the diagram below illustrates.

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Materials discarded in Massachusetts are collected through a variety of means, including curbside and drop-off programs, and then either:

The table below quantifies waste generation, diversion and disposal in Massachusetts in 2000 and 2006.  The data includes both municipal solid waste (MSW) and construction and demolition (C&D) debris.

In Massachusetts, most municipalities provide some type of solid waste management services to residents of single family homes and small multi-family buildings (usually with fewer than four or six units, depending on the municipality).

Most commercial waste is managed by the businesses (usually through a contract that the business or building manager establishes with a trash hauler), although a few municipalities offer solid waste services to some (generally small) businesses.

At building construction and demolition projects, the contractor typically arranges for waste collection by a private hauler as part of the project.

Residential trash and recyclables are handled in a variety of ways by cities and towns in Massachusetts. While not required by law to provide solid waste management services to their residents, most municipalities contract with waste companies to serve their residents, either by collecting materials at the curb or by providing a location where residents (and in some cases, businesses as well) can drop off materials.

In municipalities that do not provide these services, residents must manage their own recyclables and trash through private contracts with haulers. The table below indicates how municipalities across Massachusetts provided solid waste management services to their residents in 2006.

Most municipalities that provide curbside collection of recyclable material and trash contract with private waste management firms for these services.  A comparatively small number of municipalities (between 20 and 30) use their own workers and trucks to collect recyclable materials and/or trash.

Municipal programs vary widely in their details (frequency of curbside recycling collection, drop-off hours of operation, and the range of recyclable materials or bulky waste accepted).  They also vary in how they are funded. 

Some municipalities fund the entire cost of trash and recycling services (curbside or drop-off) out of their general fund (e.g. property tax receipts).  Others fund it with a direct assessment paid by residents and/or business.  Some use a combination of general fund and direct assessments.  This approach may use an incentive-based fee system where residents pay on a per-unit basis (e.g. bag or barrel) for trash collection and disposal and receive unlimited recycling without a fee. This is known as a Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT) system.

Across Massachusetts, 124 municipalities with a total population of 1,550,000 have adopted a PAYT approach that serves some or all of their residents. There are several variations of PAYT programs operating in Massachusetts municipalities:  some allow residents to dispose of one container of trash without paying but charge for disposal of additional containers; others charge for all waste disposal.  Through their economic incentives, PAYT programs have been very successful in increasing the rates at which residents recycle their discarded materials, and in reducing the quantities of waste that need to be disposed of.

Learn about the recycling collection technologies currently being used in Massachusetts, as well as the facilities that handle and process them.

In 2006, Massachusetts diverted 7.34 million tons of discarded materials from disposal, or about 53 percent of solid waste generated in the state that year.

Recyclable material may be taken to handling facilities, including materials recovery facilities (MRFs), which package loads of sorted recyclable material and ship them to businesses that incorporate the material into new products.  Some materials (such as plastic) need to be "processed" further to reduce their volume and toxicity and to prepare them for a manufacturing process before they can be shipped to a new user.  For example, large metal appliances have their toxic components removed so they can be disposed of properly, and are then shredded into small pieces which are generally shipped to Asia for reuse in new steel.

There are more than 334 recycling programs across the state that collect a wide range of materials. This is made possible with the help of more than 1,400 Massachusetts businesses that collect, process or use these materials to manufacture new products. Some material is ultimately shipped out-of-state or overseas to be incorporated into new products.  The table lists materials in our solid waste and the new items they can become when recycled.

Many of the materials listed in table above are banned from disposal by MassDEP regulation.  Learn more about the waste bans.

Industries sometimes produce waste materials that can be safely and profitably re-used in other industrial applications. 

Since October 2005, when MassDEP issued its Beneficial Use Determination (BUD) regulations [link to BUD regulation discussion on p. 6] were revised, 72 BUDs have been issued.  Most (60) cover the use of waste material at specific locations, and twelve apply to specific wastes and uses statewide: 

• Regulated Systems (Category 2):  Forty-seven BUDs have been issued for a variety of applications, including residuals from processing construction and demolition debris at landfills for daily cover or contour material, short paper fiber mixed with soil and used as vegetative cover material at landfills, and residuals from drinking water treatment facilities that are used to fill and grade roads at properties owned or operated by municipal drinking water facilities.
  
  
• Restricted Applications (Category 3):  Twenty-two BUDs have been issued.  Examples include the use of coated or painted asphalt, brick and concrete that is used as fill material in the construction of buildings, roadways, and parking lots; street sweepings used to reclaim gravel pits, and asphalt roof shingles used in the construction of roads.
  
  
• Unrestricted Applications (Category 4):  Three BUDs have been issued, all for the use of clean (i.e., unpainted and untreated) wood from construction and demolition debris to make mulch for landscaping.

To date, MassDEP has not issued any BUDs for commercial products (Category 1).  Projects in this category could include the use of foundry sand in concrete products (e.g., stairs, foundations, and barriers).  Some activities that could be considered Category 1 BUDs may also be regulated as "recycling" activities, and may not need to obtain a BUD approval.

MassDEP inspects businesses that hold BUDs to ensure that the terms of the approval are being complied with.  Between October 1, 2007 and September 30, 2008, MassDEP staff conducted eight inspections, and issued three Notices of Noncompliance and two Orders to correct specific problems observed.

Some types of construction and demolition debris have been recycled for many years.  For example:  

• Discarded asphalt, concrete, and bricks are usually ground up and used underneath new buildings and roads.  
  
  
• Metal that is discarded at construction projects is also usually recycled into new steel.

Since 1997 (when MassDEP issued a statewide approval), loads of C&D "fines" or pieces of debris no larger than three inches in diameter have been used at landfills for alternative daily cover, and for grading/shaping material at landfills that are being capped and closed.  In 2001, MassDEP started to allow C&D debris that contained slightly larger pieces (no bigger than six inches in diameter) to be re-used at landfills for the same purposes.  C&D fines replace clean soil that would otherwise have been required.

In the late 1990s, wood that has been separated from other debris began to be shipped to a biomass energy generation facility in Maine and more recently has begun to be shipped to a particle board facility in Quebec.

In 2005, MassDEP banned the disposal of asphalt, brick, concrete, metal and wood from C&D work.  This ban took effect in 2006.

The table below summarizes the tonnages of C&D debris generated, diverted to recycling and re-use, and disposed of in Massachusetts in 2000 and 2006.

In 2006, Massachusetts citizens, businesses, government, and institutions disposed of 6.5 million tons of solid waste in landfills and municipal waste combustors (MWCs), located in Massachusetts and out of state. 

Many municipalities have entered into long-term contracts with specific facilities for disposal of the waste they collect.  Other municipalities have contracted with haulers to collect residents' waste, but allow the hauler to decide which disposal facility to take the waste to - a decision that is usually based largely on the price that the facility charges for the load (or set of loads), and the locations of disposal facilities that the hauler (or its parent company) may own.  In this way, waste is treated as a commodity with its own market. 

As the table below illustrates, while most solid waste generated in Massachusetts (79 percent) is disposed at in-state facilities, 21 percent of our waste was shipped to disposal facilities located in other states in 2006.  States that received the largest amounts of Massachusetts waste included Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio and South Carolina.

Learn more about the disposal technologies currently in use across Massachusetts, as well as several alternative waste management options currently being tried in other states and countries.