One year after new recycling compactors were installed at Vashon’s transfer station and a yard and food waste pilot program was instituted, county data shows use of these alternate forms of disposal has grown significantly.

In the first six months of this year, 922 tons of recyclable and compostable materials was brought to the station — 341 tons of yard and food waste and 581 tons of recyclables — King County Solid Waste spokesman Logan Harris said. Nearly 30 percent, by weight, of all waste hauled to the station by islanders and island businesses is being recycled or composted.

In that same time frame last year — January to June — county data shows 552 tons of recyclable material was brought in. The county installed compactors that allow for co-mingled (unsorted) recycling in August 2015. The yard and food waste pilot program began in September 2015 as a partnership between island environmental organization Zero Waste Vashon and King County.

King County officials attribute the increase in the use of alternative disposal methods to these upgrades at the transfer station, especially the compactors’ ability to accept co-mingled recycling. But this change has drawn criticism from some islanders who are skeptical about the recycling process. Dale Alekel, King County Solid Waste Division program manager, told The Beachcomber last week during a tour of the transfer station that the division has heard from islanders who believe recyclables aren’t actually being recycled because they are not separated before being compacted and sent off-island. Some islanders have also raised the same concerns to Beachcomber reporters.

The compacted, co-mingled recycling — glass, cardboard, paper, plastic and shredded paper in a plastic bag — is sorted off-island at a Republic Services material recovery facility in Seattle. That is part of the reason that shredded paper needs to be placed in a plastic bag, even though plastic bags are not recyclable. The fact has been another point of contention for those skeptical of the compactors.

“At the sorting facility, workers can just grab the (plastic) bag and empty the paper into an area with the rest of the shredded paper. It’s much easier to sort and bundle if it’s all together,” Alekel said.

The plastic bags are thrown away along with any other materials that are found to not be recyclable, contaminated with food and disposed of. This number is called the residual rate, and Alekel said that Republic Services, and all other disposal companies, is mandated to keep track of these rates.

Doug Williams, King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks spokesman, said that he did not have a residual rate specific to Vashon. The closest he said he could get was the residual rate for south King County home curbside recycling: 12 percent. Meaning that 12 percent of all material that is picked up in recycling bins is either contaminated or not recyclable and must be disposed of.

“Everything gets sorted in Seattle by Republic,” Alekel said. “As long as people are placing the recyclable material listed on the signs (outside the compactors), it is being recycled. If residents are placing non-recyclable material in the compactors, that won’t be recycled.”

Recyclable materials are bailed together by kind and sold to companies that can use the material to make other things.

Eric Johnson, another King County Solid Waste project manager, said that he also receives questions about the recycling process. He said that the confusion goes back to “old time recyclers” who separated paper, plastic and glass down to glass color.

“It’s hard for people to understand how it is being recycled if it isn’t being separated,” he said. “What I relate it to is curbside recycling. They (disposal companies) have been compacting all of this recycling since curbside recycling began, and all of that is getting sorted.”

He said that while recycling placed into the transfer stations compactors is compacted, it is not packed so tightly to a point that it cannot be separated.

“It’s not being compacted into a big bale as many think,” he said. “What we’re doing here is condensing it, taking the open air space out of it and allowing it to be transported.”

In fact, the county provided data on the amounts of each kind of recyclable received from Vashon in the first six months of this year. Yard waste’s 341 tons comes in at the top, with mixed paper next at 294.5 tons and cardboard with 199 tons.

The compactors were installed in an attempt to cut down on the amount of trips being made to haul the waste off-island. In May of 2015, before the installation of the compactors, county officials told The Beachcomber that recycling was being hauled off the island twice every day in containers that held 1.5 to 2 tons of material. With the compacting containers, 6 to 7 tons of material can be held, and officials said last week that the containers are hauled off-island once every couple days — 22 times per month. Fewer trips means less emissions from trucks, fewer ferry rides and an overall decrease in greenhouse gas emissions.

County officials said last week that from the time the compactors were installed in August 2015 to July 2016, 360 garbage truck trips were eliminated. The eliminated trips saved roughly 1,946 gallons of fuel.

Meanwhile, the yard and food waste pilot program spearheaded by Zero Waste Vashon (ZWV) is seeing promise, according to Alekel and ZWV’s Gib Dammann. While official collection numbers for the one-year pilot will not be available until next month, Alekel said the program has been “quite successful.”

“It’s been more successful than at any of the other transfer stations,” she said.

Dammann seconded her thoughts and said it’s safe to say the program “is not going to be scratched.” He said two local churches, the Methodist and Episcopal, have been collecting and aggregating food waste from their congregations and the community and have been averaging between 180 and 200 pounds of food waste every week.

Once the data is analyzed next month, the county will determine what the next steps are to bring better infrastructure to the program. Currently, the yard and food waste drop off consists of a white, tent-like structure behind the regular recycling area that islanders back their cars up to and dump the waste.

“We wanted to understand the feedstock and quantities of yard waste and compost,” program manager Johnson said. “It’s a substantial investment for a proper loading area, and we wanted to make sure there was a need.”