Now more than a year into a study on reducing landfill use, Franklin County Solid Waste Department is considering turning garbage into energy and encouraging more recycling.

As part of its five-year plan, the department in 2015 enlisted the services of environmental and energy consulting firm Golder Associates to study decreasing the use of a landfill for solid waste.

William Anderson, Solid Waste director, said the most logical option so far is refuse derived fuel, or RDF. The garbage would be converted into a substance that could be burned and used for energy.

“It’s almost like Corn Flake woodchips if you will, and it is a consistent BTU value, so you take that material and put it in a boiler or cement kiln and then they are able to use that almost like a woody material to burn,” he said. “It has plastic in it and paper, some of the things that don’t come out of the waste are all in there, so all together it makes that a really high BTU-valued material.”

There are two alternatives for the refuse derived fuel, Anderson said. One is using the energy to operate the Solid Waste facility and other government buildings in the Joyce Lane area of Winchester, like the sheriff’s department and health department. The other is selling the chips to large cement operations. The equipment needed to convert trash into energy would cost about $8 million, Anderson noted.

The refuse derived fuel option would not eliminate the need to haul garbage from the transfer station in Estill Springs to the landfill in Rhea County. After removing recyclables and processing for RDF, about 25 percent of solid waste would still go to the landfill, Anderson said.

“There are some things that you’re not going to be able to do, glass being one of the big ones,” he said. “We would have to find either a recycling outlet for glass or it would be landfilled.”

Currently the county pays Santek, which manages the Estill Springs transfer station and transports the garbage to the Rhea County landfill, about $50 per ton. The county is responsible for the cost of roughly 800 tons of landfill material per month, which includes the trash from 15 convenience centers, the transfer station at Joyce Layne, and trash from city pick-ups, not including Sewanee and Winchester, Anderson said.

On the Sewanee Domain, private contractor Joe B. Long handles regular curbside pickup, but that trash is transported to the landfill in Marion County at a cost of $33.50 per ton, Long said. Franklin County transports trash from Sewanee’s convenience center to the transfer station in Estill Springs. The Sewanee convenience center yields about 40 tons of garbage per month, Anderson said.

Local officials said the cost to taxpayers for hauling materials to the landfill could be greatly reduced if more people would recycle.

Carol Fulmer is regional administrator of education, recycling and waste reduction for the Interlocal Solid Waste Authority (ISWA), a partnership between Franklin, Lincoln, Moore and Bedford counties and the city of Tullahoma. The ISWA owns the transfer station in Estill Springs.

“If you throw something in the garbage, taxes are spent—you pay for that,” Fulmer said. “If you put something in the recycling bin it can be sold for revenue that will go back in the Solid Waste Department’s budget to pay for the garbage and the expense of running the facility.”

In 2016, the Franklin County Solid Waste Department’s revenue from recyclables was $209,208, Anderson said. The biggest seller was cardboard, which brought in $143,000; ferrous metals garnered $30,000; and junk mail, newspapers and other paper products generated about $25,000. Plastics brought in $6,700 in revenue.

But selling the recycled items is only part of the picture, Anderson said, because not taking the recyclables to the landfill saved about $323,500.

Anderson noted that there are still plenty of recyclable materials being trashed.

“They did a waste study and there was still about 21 percent of recyclable material in Franklin County’s waste we’re responsible for that could be recycled,” he said. “That’s a big number. It was almost a quarter of the material that people throw away in Franklin County that could be pulled out or recycled.”

The Sewanee convenience center generates about 10 to 15 tons of recyclable material per month, Anderson said, and of the 15 convenience centers, Sewanee is around the fifth highest producer of trash and recyclables.

Long’s company also picks up recyclable materials curbside on the first and third Fridays of each month, which are processed by Franklin County. Numbers for curbside recycling in Sewanee were not available.

The Solid Waste Department currently does not recycle glass, which can be cost prohibitive, but the University of the South does. In numbers provided by Rachel Petropoulos, the University’s energy specialist, Sewanee recycled 283 tons of glass between 2012 and 2016. In 2016, the University earned $510 for 63 tons of glass.

“The main expense for the program is the cardboard boxes that we need to purchase for collection,” Petropoulos said. “We purchase used boxes that run $17 apiece and we go through around 100 boxes per year. Additional expense includes some labor costs each month to maintain the area.”

She added that recycling glass does save at the landfill, avoiding $2,110 in fees at the Marion County landfill in 2016. Strategic Materials based in Houston, Texas, with locations in Nashville and Atlanta, pays the University for the glass, Petropoulos said.