With Permission
State environmental commissioner Robert Klee met this week with Branford High student Etta Hanlon to learn how towns and perhaps even cities might duplicate Branford’s innovative Christmas paper recycling program.
Hanlon, 15, came up with the idea to recycle Christmas wrappings last year and she and Dan McGowan, the Branford Solid Waste Management director, got the program underway. Branford’s Christmas recycling plan not only helped the environment, it saved Branford money in tipping fees by recycling 18 tons of wrapping paper waste. Click here to read the story.
This week the pair visited the state house to discuss how their program worked. They met with Klee, long known as the administrator with a PH.D in Trash, and Branford State Rep. Lonnie Reed, who arranged the meeting. (Click here to read about Klee.)
Reed told the Eagle that the new recycling plan, which Hanlon devised after years of throwing Christmas paper in the trash, may soon become a model for the state. Klee’s agency, the Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), is now studying the idea. Branford’s state delegation honored Hanlon and McGowan last month.
Commissioner Klee said he was impressed that, “Etta had the passion and the confidence to suggest to legislators and local officials ways to implement an initiative that can help increase the state’s recycling rate and improve the environment.”
Etta’s dad, Doug Hanlon, a member of the Representative Town Meeting (RTM), provided the introductions that led Etta and McGowan to present their case to the RTM, which approved the program.
Klee said their meeting was productive: “By meeting with both Etta and Dan, we learned how this successful initiative could provide a model for other towns and how we may be able to duplicate the program.”
Reed, who chairs the legislature’s House Energy and Technology Committee, led the debate for passage of a new state law designed to increase the recycling of Connecticut’s trash to 60 percent by 2024. She told the Eagle that the state is looking for ways “to make money by selling hard plastics, metals and organics, instead of burning them.”
Klee, who has spent his life studying trash-related issues, wants to devise new recycling programs. He particularly wanted to know how Branford’s kids became motivated to take part in the Branford program. What he learned was that the school kids were sent home for the holidays with Christmas recycling bags in hand. And they used them.
Following her meeting at DEEP, Etta said, “It was an incredible honor to meet Commissioner Klee and his team. They were friendly and receptive to our ideas. I think Dan and I made a strong case that the Branford program can be replicated in other Connecticut towns.”
McGowan added, “I look forward to continuing to work with Etta and our state leaders to expand the Holiday Wrapping Paper Program. In our first year, we were successfully able to divert nearly 40 percent of our holiday waste to recycling, saving the town approximately $2,000 in tipping fees.”
Rep. Reed said, “Given our ambitious new state goal of 60 percent recycling by 2024, we need to seek out all kinds of innovative ideas, and Etta and Dan promise to help us launch a pilot program by reaching out to other towns in the Branford region. It might even result in a fun, friendly competition with area towns challenging one another.”
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I am in Hamden and have always treated wrapping paper as "paper" and tossed it in with our other recycle stuff 1.e. cans and battles etc (formerly paper and other recycles were kept separate but in recent years, can be put in the same container
Does Branford have a special provision, or is 'wrapping paper" treated separately in all towns?