Plastic bottles, oil filters, wooden pallets on landfills’ new banned items list

T. J. ROYAL

Beginning Oct. 1, the Edgecombe County Landfill will no longer accept spent oil filters, wooden pallets or recyclable, rigid plastic bottles.

Landfill Administrative Assistant Gloria Moseley said that while the plastic containers can be taken to any of the nine recycling centers within the county, the pallets and cleaned oil filters should be brought to the landfill itself at 1601 Colonial Road outside of Tarboro.

The state ban on disposing of those materials "will save space in the landfills, and it will help with the recycling part" of Edgecombe County's public utility, County Landfill Director Danny Bagley said.

"There's right much demand for plastic right now," he added, which will further help with the county's recycling efforts.

Before dropping off the pallets, they should be cleared of any plastic or foam covering, as well as any concrete debris, Moseley said. The oil filters should also be cleared of any oil before bringing them to the landfill.

Plastic bottles taken to recycling centers should have their caps taken off, "because they are not recyclable," she added.

Recently, one woman came in with a trash bag full of plastic bottles with all the lids on, and Moseley said the woman became irate "because we told her she had to take all the caps off" before the center would accept them.

She said the landfill also recently had a company bring in a load of pallets covered in concrete, and that they had to be turned away until the debris was cleaned off.

Other substances banned from being buried in landfills include used oil, most yard trash, antifreeze, aluminum cans, whole scrap tires, lead acid batteries and oyster shells.

Bagley said that county residents and commercial operations can bring yard waste, such as tree limbs, grass clippings and similar debris to the landfill, where it is turned into free yard mulch.

Yard trash is "banned" in the sense that it can not be buried when it can be recycled and reused, Bagley said. "It's just got to be put in the right place."

What is buried within the landfill, the director said, is debris from commercial projects, like land-clearings or right-of-way clearings where glass, bricks and dirt are mixed in with tree limbs and other yard waste.

Beginning in January 2011, discarded television and computer equipment will not be allowed to be buried in landfills.