##VIDEO ID:Kf3JmNsBi9Y## hello and welcome to the township of Sparta environmental Commission meeting for Thursday November 14th 2024 it is 7:01 and we are called to order we are live in the council chambers at the municipal building and on YouTube at www.youtube.com backpart WP streams um adequate notice of this meeting was provided to the public in the Press on January 5th 2024 by delivering to the press and posting on the township website a copy of this notice Michelle will you do roll call please yes councilman Daniel cherell I'm here chairwoman Kimberly null here Vice chair Neil sarne here Christine Dunbar here Ted Gaul Christine Rogers here Linda Tower Barbara klocka here Landon teneri here Robert utto here John gr okay all right thank you so much remember everybody to use the microphones when when you can when you're speak because it won't pick up on theing thank you all right please join me in saluting the flaged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all you all right we have two sets of minutes to approve um both sets from October 1010 24 and 102 2424 did anybody have any comments or questions modifications to the 10 10 minutes October 10th minutes on the second to last line on the back page my name is spelled wrong yes it is oh sorry about that do I have any other changes do I have motion to approve minutes with that change in Christine Rogers name so moved I have a second I'll second thank you all in favor I okay um looking at October 24th 2024 minutes any changes to those minutes under new business it should be sent University okay any other changes all right do I have a motion to accept the minutes with the change from Centenary College to Centenary University I'll make a motion to approve thanks Christine second oh second Christine thank you all in favor I I okay all right um tonight we have a presentation um from schuma recycling coordinator how to recycle more um so let me introduce Dawn and she's gonna go ahead and do our presentation for us I know do you do we all want to go down there or for okay good evening everyone I'm Don lenic recycling coordinator for cus County mua and I'm so excited to be here tonight to reveal some um interesting information about recycling expand your knowledge in anticipation of tomorrow which is America's uh recycle day holiday so um we're going to see if this works all right we're going to start with this lovely picture anybody's been to our landfill and Lafayette this is a picture of our newly expanded and renovated landfill and this is the source of um a basis of our discussion how we are filling this so everybody in the audience I assume are spart Sparta residents or Sussex County residents you are responsible for filling up all the sections of this landfill that you see before you u in the foreground is it's called a new cell that's not yet being used but if you look in the background where you see kind of a dirt color that's where all the garbage trucks are currently going it was only opened um gosh just a little more than a year ago it's already half full so every day all of our garbage trucks from all around the county are dumping all of our garbage into those cells the one in the foreground will be the next one that we start filling and then we're going to make one more in between the two of those and that's it so we have room up until 2066 there may be some new technologies before then but that's our challenge as a county how can we slow that down how can we not have as much garbage going there every single day so recycling is a big part of that which is why we're here tonight to talk about how we can help do more with the recycling so we're going to try to improve your recycling IQ we're going to talk about myths that are in the news about recycling a little bit about behind the scenes where does your recycling actually go uh recycling more at the scua uh you've probably heard re reuse reduce recycle but there's some additional RS that I'd like to bring to your attention tonight and a little bit about what's coming in New Jersey in terms of additional recycling um exciting news and rules that are coming and hopefully some good take way so let's talk about recycling in Sussex County uh it's a little confusing we have 24 municipalities and they all handle it a little differently some towns do not have curbside pickup they actually have to take their recycling in their cars and come to the Sussex County mua I showed you to Landfield part we also have a recycling center so we're very fortunate that they can come there for free some of our towns have some wonderful recycling drop off centers right specific to their town buron Township has one newton has a newly expanded one where they have just about everything that we have at this point so those towns really have an asset where they can go very close to home and get rid of their recycling we also have some discrepancies in the county between how the curbside recycling is handled there's something called single stream and something called dual stream Sparta is on the single stream uh track meaning you get to put all your recycling all in one container at home it's like the easier way to do it hopefully everything's okay um you get to put your cardboard in with your cans and your bottles and it's a little takes a little less thinking right and it's a lot more convenient however what that usually turns into is people getting a little sloppy are a little Wishful and start throwing everything in there things that don't belong so you end up with what's called contamination so you're actually hauling material to the recycling place that we'll talk about and some of it's garbage so you wasted that space that transportation that cost on things that are not going to be recycled the preferred way to do curbside recycling if you wanted to do a more careful system is the Dual stream where you have residents put out their cardboard in their paper on one day and then the next week or another day during the week they're coming back and they're taking your bottles your cans um and your glass so we have again some towns doing it one way some towns are doing it another and I'm sure it was cost basis or other Decisions by the towns to to make those decisions if you were going to bring your recycling to us at the scua so for those towns that don't have curbside or if you missed your pickup and you want to bring your recycling as a single stream Community you cannot bring it to the L yet to our facility because we only take things that are separated why because I Market those materials and I Market them much more successfully if they are clean if you're just giving me cardboard and you're just giving me your newspaper and your bottles and your cans are all separated we cannot take the single stream because we have no way to sort that out and Market it for us does that make sense so dual stream you're stuck I mean dual stream can come to us sorry single stream um have to deal with your own curb side the county does have a list of mandatory recyclables that are in the saw Waste Management plan but we've gone beyond that we actually recycle a lot more things in the county and that's one of the reasons I'm here tonight to tell you about all of those I also wanted to mention the tonnage uh grants that the state offers to all of our municipalities once a year your Township recycling coordinator right now it's Robin hattersley is asking all the businesses in your community to provide data on how many tons of recyclables did they have in the previous calendar year and it's sorted by all the different categories how much cardboard how much glass how much plastic and then it's submitted to the state and each mun municipality gets grant money back based on the tons of recyclables that they can prove they did for the year so it's beneficial to you as a community to increase that number to have less solid waste and have more recycling so that you have then more funds that can be devoted to some recycling efforts whether it's education at the schools or buying some recycling equipment or supporting your um say your trucks and the last thing about Sussex County in terms of enforcement if we did have um a quick check or not not to pick on them but any business that's not doing the right thing in terms of recycling the enforcement side is actually handled by the Board of Health so if you did notice or had a complaint it's the Board of Health that actually would site them uh the township zoning officers usually uh can get involved if it's a really minor violation but if it's something serious it gets elevated to the level of Board of Health so let's talk about those recycling myths that are out there there's been a lot of bad press about recycling um some people get very cynical they're like why bother it's just going to end up in the garbage anyway um there I I'm here to tell you that there is recycling it is happening I'm seeing it happening I've been to the places where it's recycled we'll talk about some that's actually happening right here in the state does it end up in the landfill well what ends up in the landfill is if you wish cycle and if you're putting things in your recycling that really are not recyclable and we'll talk more about that so how you can be careful that's what's going to the landfill the other myth there's no markets for recycling you may recall five seven years ago China decided not to take the recycling from the US any longer they were sick of all the contamination and they said this this is not good quality we're not taking it anymore that was a bump in the road for recycling markets but markets have come back different markets we now have other places that are taking recycling so on a monthly basis um at the susus county amua I'm going out and looking at those markets recyclables are commodity just like gold um or any any other commodity out there they fluctuate based on the demand so we are looking on a monthly basis where can we best sell our cardboard or our glass but those are markets out there recycling doesn't save money waste more energy well if you can think about I don't know tin can it does take less energy to recycle that tin can than if you think back to how you got the can to begin with from from the mining operation from the production standpoint you know all of that there actually is a definite Savings of most of these recyclables instead of going back to using the pure material that started it sorry these keep going a little too fast for me all right probably the biggest one that people people are curious about are those chasing arrows in the top right corner and you see them at the bottom of a lot of or almost all of your plastic containers so your water bottles your laundry detergent bottles your yogurt cups they all have these chasing arrows and they have a number in the center it was never meant to indicate that all of those are recyclable those codes are resin codes it just tells you what type of plastic that material is made out of some can be recycled herb side some can be recycled in special ways that we'll talk about and some there is no Market we just talked about markets some are not marketable they're not going to be recyclable so this it's been a misleading thing to have those chasing arrows and we'll talk about what New Jersey and other states are doing about that another myth is well just put it in in the garbage it's going to decompose over time um the landfill is carefully controlled we can do a whole another seminar on landfill construction things will decompose but very very slowly sometimes hundreds of years so it's not okay to just put things in the landfill and hope well that it'll just go away and we'll be fine this one should make you happy uh recyclables do not have to be squeaky clean so you do not have to scrub all of your recycling before you put it out for curbside pickup what would be nice and especially if you're a single stream Community like Sparta is that you don't have any free flowing liquids like a spaghetti jar and you just throw it in there with your paper and your cardboard because if that gets wet that becomes no value does that make sense for our facility it's also we don't want things that have a lot of food still in it because the bees get very happy and coming to our dumpsters and then our residents obviously have an issue so for a safety standpoint and and hygiene we like it to be rinsed out cleaned but you don't have to get in there and scrub and soap and do all that okay the other myth is that Plastics are infinitely recyclable the petroleum industry would love for you to believe that but it is not the case so a water bottle is not going to be recycled into another water bottle into another water bottle indefinitely and we've probably all heard about posos these um Nano particles that are getting out there into the environment so no plastic is not the end all right can you infinitely recycle metal glass much more likely than the Plastics and again this is where we get in trouble if we have something and we throw it in the recycling bin well they'll probably figure out how to recycle it no there's a set way these things are sorted when they go down to a a materials recovery facility and it's not going to just magically happen that some of these things we're going to talk about are going to get recycled and I think the pictures and if the video works um I think it really helps understand why that's the case why does this seem so problematic why can't I just throw in and I have some little why can't I throw a hanger in my curbside recycling it's plastic what's the problem like why can't they just deal with it when it gets down there turn it into something this is why this is called a materials recovery facility this is where all your recycling is going that's where the trucks are headed and they're all throughout New Jersey and you can see it's a big mess of some recyclables and some contamination and yes there are people hand sorting at the beginning of this process when it's coming down on these conveyor belts and they are pulling in or pulling out those materials that don't belong in there they're pulling out plastic bags that get tangled in the equipment they pull out The Hanger they pull out the containers that are too small they pull out dangerous things that people put in the recycling just because they're whatever lazy and once it leaves them it's going through this very complicated materials recovery facility and let's see if the video will go and that'll really give you the story looked like it was going to do something if not we can talk about it do you have control you have the okay go back a SL can we go back back a slide or no I don't have do I have control of the mouse again no there is it's not moving now I'm I'm not able to make it there all right picture this in motion so what happens is the materials are going through all different conveyors up into different spinning um discs where the cardboard is going to be knocked out because of these spinning discs the rest of it continues on and there's different blowers and air jets that are going to blast at the paper and then the paper drops down and that's going to go to get bailed up there's areas where the glass is going to go along and get broken and that's going to drop out and that's going to go into a bin and that's going to get bailed and go out Plastics are still going along and there's these QC people all along trying to pull out the wrong things and the plastic area they actually use Optical sorters now so they're actually have something looking for the shape of a water bottle and making sure that you know if it is a water bottle it's going to go in the right place if it's something too small in these discs in these systems like this it's just going to fall through it's going to go into their garbage bin in those systems with those spinning wheels and discs and conveyor belts something like this or something like this can jam up and just stop the whole operation you saw how much material they're trying to put through these systems so to have to stop and cut out the plastic bags that got wrapped around and it's dangerous and it slows things down so again there's multiple floors multiple layers and all this different separation is happening for each of the materials that you're trying to capture but they can't capture everything there's magnets in there that's capturing the metal there are um air Jetties that they're using to get the aluminum so all these things are being pull out of that you know that mix of stuff that you put together they've got to undo it so they can sell it so the rules for curbside pickup that I'd like you to go away with today these are the does these are the things that should be in your curbside and for you and Sparta these are all being put together a lot of questions we get around pizza boxes uh pizza boxes can go in but we don't want your cheesy mess you don't want the cheesy um little insert and if the got really greasy and it's better to just throw it away we don't want it to contaminate other things in your bin you can read through the others um soft cover books are easy to go through the system hard cover not so much so we actually ask people to tear off the covers alternatively you could bring them to a book drop there is one for Karen and quinland on Newton Sparta Road and the Newton recycling center just had uh another drop off spot added there and I'm hoping to get one at the CMI the Plastics that are consistently recyclable in New Jersey are the ones with those numbers that I was talking about but only three of those numbers the ones the twos and the fives what's not on there sixes so anybody who has red Solo cups you're buying them you're buying garbage these are not going to be recycled these are just going to be our landfill as an example so you can look at what you're buying and see if it's something that's recyclable by checking the resin codes for now what happened 35 years ago when we started recycling in New Jersey is they allowed each County to designate what materials they can recycle and of course everybody has a different list so if you have a house down the shore they may have totally different rules about how to recycle than up here so it's been very frustrating to try to educate at the public so I'm happy to say that New Jersey is working on what's called Truth and labeling where they're going to require manufacturers to only put those codes on the bottom with the chasing arrows if it is actually recyclable in New Jersey it has been done already out in Oregon I'm looking at it for California as well but in order to do that we have to be consistent across the state so the association for New Jersey recyclers worked very hard this year to actually canvas all of the recyclers in the state and came up with a list of the things that are definitely recyclable in New Jersey a list of things that are not recyclable anywhere in New Jersey and then a check locally list because there are a few things we're going to talk about that we recycle even here in Sussex County that may not be able to happen in other counties so now that we have that we're hoping the legislature will move forward with the truth and labeling legislation it just moved out I think it's going to the Senate um it just moved I think today out of one of the Committees and it's been moving on so hopefully that's going to come forward and you'll start hearing some State education where we're all on the same page and we're all know what we're supposed to be recycling um another one that we get a lot yes leave caps on the bottles this is from the bottle industry the Caps are made out of a different plastic but for those Optical sords it's very important that it still looks like a bottle as it's chugging through that system that I described if you squash the bottle and it's a flat thing and it goes through and that doesn't recognize it it's going to reject it it's going to go in the garbage pile that kind of make sense and then obviously keep your items Loose as you're putting in you're recycling a Tanner don't put it in a plastic bag we already talked about how that can tangle everything up those are the dues the don'ts like we said no plastic bags no plastic wrap can you recycle plastic bags can you recycle plastic wrap absolutely just don't put it in your curbside recycling it's not that simple you have to bring it to a separate location B batteries big huge do not put in your recycling do not put in your garbage there have been fires right here in susex County at our landfill and very large fires elsewhere in the state just from those little lithium batteries getting run over by a truck at a facility and burn them to the ground so we need you to be very careful with your rechargeable batteries um and bring those to a special place which we'll talk about do not put Styrofoam food wrappers and you can read the list the plastic hangers we talked about about plastic utensils they're just going to fall through the system there's no way to capture that and get them recycled a lot of places in the state cannot handle wax line cups so you're you know whatever you went to Starbucks Dunkin Donuts anything with the wax line there's nobody recycling that your ice cream containers there's very few facilities so that's not going to be on the Statewide list as being a it's going to be a check locally hopefully this is helping and not confusing you further so that's the lessons on curbside recycling and we can Pat ourselves on the back every week when we take out our curbside recycling that we've done our job but yet there is so much more that we can do and we are lucky we can do because we have the Sussex County mua if you haven't been there come on by it's newly renovated and we're going to talk about the extra things that you can bring to us to help the county and your town do more recycling at our recycling center everything I'm going to talk about is free I already mentioned that if you missed your recycling pickup or your town doesn't have curbside you can bring your cardboard to us your newspaper your co-mingled glass and plastic in addition you can bring EPS foam and an example would be a cooler or this stiff white EPS foam that you would get like a new television so if you have this it can't go in your recycling at home that's just going to go in the garbage but if you put it in your car and you bring it to us we're able to densify it down and make a useful product out of it I'll have a slide about that in a second you can bring your oil your antifreeze if you have somebody's doing all your Automotive fluids at home it's transmission fluid hydraulic fluid all that can be brought for free to our recycling center five gallons a day and we recycle that cooking oil anybody doing uh deep fried turkeys coming up for Thanksgiving but any cooking oil you have we take that as well and it gets turned into biofuel so canola peanut all those different ones and I mentioned those rechargeable batteries that are causing fires we are one place that you can bring them you can also bring them to Staples Home Depot Lowe's there's a lot of areas that are taking them safely just a picture of some of the things you can bring we also have our textile donation boxes and the proceeds that we get for that goes to a variety of different non profits that you can see on there Crime Stoppers final salute and I wanted to spend a second on textiles because sadly that's one of the things we are seeing people still put in the landfill just across the US the average person throws out about 81 pounds of clothing a year in the garbage so there's a misunderstanding I think that you need to have um your clothing has to be not ripped and not stained because they're picturing it going to a secondhand store and it has to be good enough for that that is not the case there is so much recycling of these textiles that can be done as it says there yes some of it can go for usable clothing but the things that are not it's still valuable textiles that can be used to make fiber conversions or wiping cloths they use some of it to stuff the seats of cars so we really can if you want to recycle more start adding you know you only have one shoe fine throw it in the recycling bin you only have one glove and think outside the box it's not just clothing I'm calling it textiles do have any sheets curtains hats scarves all those things should be not in the landfill they should be getting back into circulation cooking aisle we mentioned that's the drop off for that and a little more about that foam that I started talking about so we're able to take this into the machine that's up on the screen this is very lightweight it's very hard for us economically to ship this until we densify it down to it's almost like a Play-Doh consistency and then it hardens into this material and we're able to then ship this down to Somerville New Jersey he actually makes so you can see up on the screen molding or walls or cruise ships um picture frames and that's happening right here in New Jersey so don't throw it away put it in a car and bring it down to us and it's free for you to drop off and we can actually make a useful product out of it that's the oil and antifreeze this is the devastation of some of those fires that we did have because people are not understanding the dangers of those rechargeable batteries we're talking about lithium batteries in your cell phones we're talking about button batteries in your hearing aids in your greeting cards they're all around us and it's it's getting more and more that we're doing electric with all these batteries we need to understand the danger of that and put them in the right places so we can ship them and get them recycled so that was called our recycling center where everything is free in addition we have our resident convenience area this is all still at the landfill uh where there's additional materials that you can bring listed there to also get recycled car batteries jump packs there's a lot of good lead that we can recover from those mat materials rigid plastic Electronics metal and we'll go through some of those for metal what do you see in this picture that you might have this is our aluminum pile so instead of taking that old lawn furniture that you know you're done with for this year and putting it out to the curb for the bulky waist day you should be hanging on to it Sparta for your metal day which I understand is at the end of each month so that at least can go maybe through Blue Diamond to get recycled or if you don't want to wait for that or forget about it put it in your car and bring it to the scua that's a lot of useful aluminum gutters lawn furniture window screens similarly with our bigger Plastics you can't put them curbside those milk crates the rubber made totes with the lids that you use for your Christmas decor ations garbage cans baskets 5 gallon buckets all of that plastic I told you certain numbers that can go in curbside these are numbers that can't go curbside but can go recycled get recycled if we do it in a load by itself and bring it down to a certain facility so if you have these another thing you can bring to us to get recycled and one message I want to get across um today is about our Electronics if you've lived in the county for a while everybody's gotten used to coming to us for our events if they're getting rid of their Electronics we now accept any day that we are open for free televisions computers printers fax machines you don't have to wait for the events you can just come and bring them we still have the events at the events All Electronics are free so if you have stereos or a camera or a video game you can bring that on those event days and it's free but you can also bring them any day and it's 6 cents a pound or 13 cents a pound depending where you're bringing it on our site uh to dis to dispose of or give to us to get recycled um I'll wait till I get to the events to talk about the other stat come on it's not going to give me the rest of the picture there it is I did want to congratulate everybody um for for Sussex County's big effort in 2024 we resurrected the boat shrink wrap program this is something else that you could bring to our facility we were awarded just two weeks ago now um this is Source reduction resource management and sustainability award from New Jersey de for restarting that boat shrink wrap program with Morris County and the lake of pong um foundation so thanks to all the marinas that helped us participate the Lake Mohawk Marina and um we had some in other towns as well but that plastic they are able to take right over to Pennsylvania and they put it through a process to make it down to this tiny little level where they can sell this they have silos of it and they're selling it back to plastic manufacturers to turn it into milk crates or other types of plastic uses so instead of for us in Sussex County is about seven tons overall with Morris County we're about 21 tons instead of that being in that landfill that I showed that first picture we were able to keep it out of the landfill and turn it into useful product other things at the scmua if you haven't heard you can bring your vegetative waste to us this is the time of year you're cleaning up your Lawns so you can bring leaves you can bring your grass clippings your brush your tree parts and your stumps sadly these things sometimes end up in the landfill which is sad because we can be composting them we can be making them into mulch so you can bring them to us and in the spring you can come back and you can get the compost in the mulch that were made for those things that you brought to us and it's free to Residents to come pick it up yourself uh the mulch uncolored Mulch and the compost and there's a small fee if you buy the red or black dyed mulch or if you want us to load for you so I mentioned the electronics the ones you can bring any day but we still have the event we also have our household hazardous waste day so if you have any nasty materials at home definitely shouldn't be in regular garbage uh we're talking about pesticides gasoline um pool chemicals anything that's corrosive those can come to us on these event days and 10 gallons for free or first 100 pounds so I wanted to just share with you a little statistic on who's been coming to the events because we just had them so you have about 20,000 residents in Sparta how many you think came to our household hazardous waste event two weeks ago out of those 20,000 people 8 85 85 so we can look at it positively that well no one has any nasty material I hope people are buying less hazardous material or is it that the word is still not out so that's something maybe the commission can think about is how you can help communicate out to people that these events are happening the last E-Waste event we had we had 100 people from Sparta and it's not just Sparta this is just representation of you know how this these events are are happening and who's coming all right real quick on the RS if we can get it to go there we go we know the reduce reuse recycle there's a few others I'm not going to spend a lot of time giving you this little quiz and have you guess because we're going long here so we'll just get right to it so before we get to reduce reuse recycle think about refusing refuse to believe you need new everything we're not going to recycle our way out of our waste issue we've got to do some rethinking about who's convincing us to buy new things why are we not refusing that that attitude reject things like junk mail or the little chot skis somebody's giving out or these little things that you know you're only going to have for a day why are we continuing to put those into our lives when they're just going to end up in garbage not are recyclable and then skipping down to rot we should all be thinking about composting food waste is such a huge issue in the country about 30% of what's in the on landfill is food waste rotting and creating methane and the last one is to react um if you see something that you're purchasing with multiple layers of packaging we need you to you know go back to the manufacturers and insists that they reduce their waste so add to your your thinking on the RS and refuse reject and then we can do the ones we're familiar with did want to give you a little update on New Jersey's progress in terms of recycling we did have a recycling content law that was enacted it's requiring manufacturers to use a certain percent of recycled material in their products and it's going to move it up every year and that's important because we need those markets for that material I'm telling you to recycle we can recycled till the cows come home but if nobody needs it it's garbage right it has to have a need so this is a way to force manufacturers to start pulling that in and making the circular economy and that lists the containers that they're targeting we also enacted a extender producer responsibility law for Ev batteries extended producer run responsibility it's a law that says hey you made it so it's your responsibility to figure out how to recycle it we already have it for electronics and that's worked very well when I told you you can bring your TVs for free and your printers for free it's free because we're making the manufacturers we meaning the state pay for that and now we're adding that to EV batteries because they're here what are we doing with them why is it my problem it should be the people that make the material figuring that out we're moving into doing that also for packaging products and I talked you about the truth and labeling that we're trying to get enacted with the chasing arrows only using it where it's appropriate and the Statewide education once we now have this standard list of what we recycle all throughout the state so that's all coming down and there's a lot happening with food waste we won't go through all these topics I'll let you just take a glance at them but we're very excited that the state is trying to make it easier for schools to do composting and T try to take some of the complicated applications and legislation out of that to encourage a lot of these things to start happening there's Grant a lot happening on the school front that should help us all reduce the impact so that was a lot of information you're going to go out here and go what did she say and what numbers is it and what do I do this is a wonderful resource called uh recycle coach paid for by the state it's on your Sparta website on your garbage and recycling it does a couple of things you can actually put in there the name of a material it'll tell you whether it is recycled or whether it's garbage you can even take a picture of it and it'll tell you if it can be recycled or not it also can be a place you can find your schedule for pickups you can also get notifications through it I push out notifications about our events we have a paper shred tomorrow if you have this app on your phone or have downloaded it you would have gotten that you would have known there's a paper shred event or you would know that there's a household hazardous waste event so I do encourage you to uh look it up and um check it out it's got a lot of good information on it so hopefully you can use some of this new recycling knowledge to celebrate tomorrow recyc America recycles day I do have some brochures up front as well that explain again everything that we have at the scua such a asset for the community to bring your extra recycling materials there and one thing I don't have on a slide but I'm going to mention to because Thanksgiving is coming up uh savethefood.com it's got a very nice um I guess we'll call it an app you go in there and you can actually put how many people are coming to Thanksgiving are they big eaters little eaters average eaters how much leftovers do you want and it's going to spit out for you how many pounds of turkey how many desserts how many pies Etc with the intent of people not throwing so much away there's a staggering I'm I'm going to probably goof on the number but millions of pounds just from Thanksgiving day is going in the landfills Millions I want to say 31 I didn't bring the flyer 31 million pounds just on the one day so take check it out it's a really useful tool not just for Thanksgiving but anytime you're having people over and that's my last announcement about uh recycling you have any questions from the audience about all that we talked about too overwhelmed quick since I got the microphone sure and I'll pass it around after after I do it you'll so Weir to be behind this wall and and the reason we're using the microphone is because people on U watching on the zoom couldn't hear us um I worked a couple of T over the couple of years on on on food waste recycling I met with the MUA about five years ago I met with the people from Newton uh met with a person a councilwoman from chadam at one point um I haven't yet come across a a good way to do it um if you have any ideas on how to implement a food waste uh Management program um we don't have to get into it now but I I'll give a card I'd like to hear it right there's a couple of um commercial entities that do curbside pickup of food waste and there's some towns that do collect have collection um containers Newton was trying to embark on that they got a grant from USDA we're watching to see how that works out they were doing it in concert with the schools and um EG Choice which is to break to a correct so back to the curb side I haven't found one yet that's that's come up this far they're close they' already backed out of it it's just very impractical it they had some problems but I think they're looking at there are towns that are looking at it again there are entities but those entities have not we're pretty spread out up here so they need for their efficiency purposes need to be able to go door too so we're keeping an eye on it we definitely would like to find somebody that could do it so right now your choices are just to compost at home and reduce where you can in terms of what waste you have um any other questions besides food waste hello okay thank you this is this is great yeah um so I have a few questions um one is that we just toss our alkaline batteries in the garbage have an update on that so in the past the state had said it's permissible to put them in the garbage because they are not considered highly toxic to the environment and it is costly to recycle them that's not to say there aren't valuable Metals in alkaline batteries there are and there are ways for you personally to recycle them but it's going to cost you money if you wanted to buy a box to do that through call to recycle but um staples the store corporate wide um have announced that they're going to start accepting alkaline batteries so that may be an outlet for us here in the county I definitely want to talk to our local store though first to make sure they are um at that point I know it's a thing that Staples like I said at the corporate level is starting to do because we the are valuable Metals for that but in general we're focusing on the rechargeables because of the Dain much greater Hazard to people as well as the environment um about how many times can a typical plastic you may not know this but I I learned it years ago but I forgotten there's a certain number of time times that plastic can actually be broken down and reformed I think it depends on the number you start out with and yeah I don't have a definite I mean it's probably it's much complicated answer because there's so many types of plastics and now there are ways they do chemical recycling which you can have your own feelings about that but there's other things are doing that with chemical recycling of plastic so I don't have a a answer at the tip here a tip of my tongue on yeah and Plastics actually aren't bodig degradable they're just going to become smaller and smaller particles and then form a dust well the microp pl and we're seeing that even before they're getting you know years and years it's happening as we're using them as we're seeing as they're showing up on our bodies so yes okay any other questions about recycling how about our students that were we were happy to see came out tonight so you mentioned plastic bags what about the reusable bags oh so I didn't really talk about plastic bags enough what do you do with plastic bags a lot of the stores the grocery stores stopped having collection because they stopped giving them out so they didn't feel like it was their responsibility but there are still stores that are taking them look for some uh drop off locations they're kind of maybe not as obvious now but you still go to Weiss markets you can still coal still has a drop off so plastic bags or any stretchy film that could be overc case wrap it can be the mail bubble wrap mailers for um Amazon so definitely there's still a place and you can bring it to us as well at our recycling center this past year it just ended yesterday we did a Year's program 10,000 pounds of plastic film um and bags that we were able to collect at the MUA your other question which I just forgot was oh the reusable bags so the reusable bags ironically are not recyclable easily uh shoppr supposedly has a program where they're taking them back and we are on the cusp of taking them at the scmua where they will be washed and then given to food banks to reuse but they are not made out of a plastic that's easily recyclable sadly oops all right well thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to you and happy America recycles day tomorrow now we are flaring the message all right well folks are re adjusting we are going to move the agenda around a little bit um because we only have one meeting in November we have quite a agenda but we did invite folks from the Green Team to come today for appointment and um so we're going to go right to that agenda item um are there folks that came to be appointed to the green team today don't know if they can hear me um I'm sorry is there anybody here that did come to be appointed to the Green Team all right I know we did have some folks online that were interested and so um I think we should probably go ahead and appoint the ones that well it's a council appointment so we have to we can't do it here okay we the council has to do it all right great um all right um so we'll Main main that list or update that list and then I'll make sure it gets to you Dan for the Town Council appointment all right great all right um we had two items of Correspondence um Suburban Consulting Engineers from the New Jersey D land use permits um they're looking for a freshwater um Wetlands uh General permit to fix some to fix the road crossing construction is going to be at the Lake Mohawk Country Club it's proposing the Reconstruction of the existing West Shore Trail bridge I think that's the one uh right by that playground right yeah okay all right right um I guess that's going to go through the planning board at some point this was just notification that they're starting the planning I'm not sure we're just waiting on a permit you're waiting on the permit at this point not going to be it's probably not going to be until next fall you got to use the mic I think it's not going to be until next fall because the state is backed up okay so all right so we'll look for that one when it comes through to the planning board um the other piece of Correspondence that we got was um Keen University at the Skylands campus which is the one just down the road in a Oakridge um right on the border of Sparta they're having a uh spring indust sustainability event on April 12th from 12 to 4 o'clock sorry um and they sent out a save the date for it I did go last year it was amazing it was so fun we had a really good time that wasn't the bioblast was it yeah but I think this is the same thing but they're calling it spring into sustainability this year I went to that last year too yeah that was really fun so definitely highly recommend that event and you can go ahead and mark your calendars for that um okay moving on to Applications we have uh three applications to review if um the commission wants to join me down there we can take a look at the different items anyone from the public can come and see too if you'd like look at the plan we look at the plan for different um things that are happening so you're welcome and that's the correspondent I'm yeah no absolutely so um we're an Advisory Board to the planning board the um commission is and so we review not every single plan that comes through but um the plans that come through um for any environmental concerns or anything like that so this is for pops Bagels well it's a new place doesn't exist yet it's going to be on um you know that that I don't know what you call it Main Street and then woodport and then right there in the corner there used to be a gas [Applause] station right by The Jug Handle oh post okay yeah yeah across the street from the post office exactly so they are making changes to that site and they're turning it into a bagel really oh that's just the boundary one they usually come with a number of maps anybody want to look at that the boundary [Applause] map that's like a property yeah where the roadway is that kind of stuff all right yeah existing floor plan the yeah they're putting in a little bit of lighting sorry so this is the new rendering this is not the lighting plan either oh recessed lighting and here's the floor plan when are they uh proposing to start all this they have to get through all this process first yeah so we're usually um before the planning board so this it's probably scheduled to be in the planning board within within a month yeah Smoothie Bar y all right never seen one of those before no all right here's probably the meat and potatoes what we usually look at oops let's find the does it have impervious coverage 100% where do you see that I come I can't see it today here it is okay close you close 8.4 one CR going to the it is so they must have had because it's already covered up they they probably had a variance at some point which we can't change right now if they were saying they were going to cover it up and it was only 40% now then we would usually make a comment about something like that right right and if they were going to lessen the current impervious coverage of course we'd be happy okay yeah existing structure to remain oh within the building they were moving concrete an island oh there's the building yeah oh I see yeah they're removing that stuff okay and the asphalt yeah what does that mean they're going to the AST put those ridges in it so they can rep it guess probably sorry here's the development plan are they going to have well it looks like they're adding some grass that's not there oh my gosh made plants come on now see what they have this has got to be close to 100% it is it said 98 okay yeah they're actually making it better when they're adding this grass here so maybe maybe well they probably have to because it's there's so much contamination there and there's like there's active monitoring Wells there you probably don't want a lot of water mixing anything up oh yeah it said it was because of a variance there's there's at least one monitoring ball there no there's plenty over here there's a couple of them yeah over here oh yeah look at them what what are they for was that wasn't gas station at one point okay yeah so that that explains that as far away as the theater from the radiation radiation not radioactive but the plume from this place wow from that place no this by the gas station the I mean by the post office y I know but there was a there's a there's a well I know that was monitoring this that was about find would that gas station from theater I know that they were think related to this because I was involved in I was surprised by it yeah parking huh I might be measuring both I know too where are they putting the lights oh there's one wall mounted wall mounted and a pole I just got to say that uh that's a very busy intersection and look at what's going on here parking the parking the parking the parking the curb cut is probably right here right and over here no there's only one here one here and one there and one there is just exit entr no it's entrance and exit they're both both I think stop sign yeah and this often gets backed up here people trying to make that turn you're not going to be able to come out for a long time oh here's the lighting does this go into the next parking um it's like it's like BS right I think it does it's not really nice though it's messy I wouldn't do it too much hopefully it'll make it better circulation plan okay here's how they're Mark the showing the cars coming so where did they come in look there's an accident right there it looks like theyve got aend they come here buck up here no one can move well we'll let you worry about the parking on the planning there yeah how how many tables are inside not too many three okay the planning board is responsible foring about now are you on the planning board also okay wow all right where is the plantings have a little sign there I still don't see any place where they said what they're gonna all right and soils soil maintenance Urban Redevelopment land code there PR action there's no there's no what like soil borings or they're just this is just their okay yeah and oh here's the the planting not many much planting is happening but well that's the detail but what's the plan those are just look at a tree but that's just your typical detail where look at the point they didn't have a landscape plan because I don't think look for the fine print that says these notes are General and may not apply to this project yeah I didn't see a landscape plan because I think they're only doing this and that yeah NE so they don't have a whole landscape plan they're only and sorry right can't really put anything tall next to the no I don't think there's trees yeah yeah but they could do something on the sides maybe and right in front I assume your only all right so I'm going to assume all their planting certainly will not be any worse than getting in that shop right all right so what comments do we have thanks sharing them we have two more don't you want to sck around fun is fun thanks for coming yeah yeah all right we'll take a look at that one who was next on the list was Firehouse the next [Music] something made difference thank you nice to you Happy Thanksgiving all right this is very are these existing Apartments I guess yeah I didn't we go through this or there's like some updates to this I think they were just doing some impr inside the structure is from yeah by the club by the country club those apartments like right there by the playround oh right in front of the tennis court yes oh and they're just making some up I believe so yeah for the new I think they were just making changes so they're not changing anything then I don't think oh they're making a new apartment that's it planning board is different why it even came to I don't know why they're us my man I'll have to ask Dory are they sending is it yeah how is it get Hasen it and this for the bridge right no no what are they doing here January 15 this is when it's going before there the planning board but what are they doing I know the the been I thought we saw this one no there was like that one was like either here or here all right so I wonder if we want to make our same comment about the basins yeah not putting just oh it's the same thing again well I don't know okay the one was the other one like right sand bottom they're not required to make it like plant life around it too are they well that's the thing we've been finding that a lot of times they have ins Sparta just rocks on the bottom or just sand and so we've been kind of every time it comes up we like Advocate again put plants in it for additional treatment decided to you know drive around all right so we got the Basin comment oh I didn't see the light the com the light comment on the other one what was the um imp coverage all right so we'll be in touch yeah this presentation I think your email is there so they're looking forious cover okay all right have a good night Vari required and previously granted okay right soil erosion sediment control plan lighting notes okay oh and here's the plants too red sunset that's not native silver maple Colorado chines no heal that's a giveaway right Japanese sliver grass no gold finger I don't know what that one is potentia Five Finger usually it is it's in the Rose family it's like a shrub is it a yellow flower well it's native to Colorado I know there you go happy face Hearts it's the same I'm not sure I don't know all right so we can make where's lighting Mount Laurel oh that's nice I know that is nice one Calia mine's not doing too well I've got elf single single single back control why Chinese juniper junipers are so we have nice junipers know everywhere drainage are we saw that drainage again where's the lights oh here it is building oh the sewage what are they making here it's the septic yeah industrial SL Warehouse that's what they anybody anything else anybody want to see with this one I don't know that they have a actual what's going to be in here yet I think they're just building it oh yeah just industrial building propos industrial Warehouse that's all they they said but they didn't say with if it's Warehouse that means they're going to be putting something together right yeah so we'll have to look at that oh they're doing two floors an upper showroom and a ground floor showroom ENT and a warehouse I don't knows that's a planning board problem thank [Laughter] you I love that you wear two hats but nlock paving stones yeah nickling staving St don't they have that along that houses Corner that's their Factory okay well they're going to have more this this is a showroom in storage yeah uh showroom wareh okay oh boy all right so what are we commenting on this one somebody remind me and lights and plants right lights and plants and BAS interesting oh this the uh this the bridge so I mean I can say that go over historic Bridge things we have to modify it for safety it's on a private roadway but we have to bring it up to compliance it's good that they're expanding the sidewalk it's good that they're expanding the side we have to have toing it up to right Bridge like everything else no doubt yeah what's the where is that this is right on the boardwalk oh this is the oh gotcha yeah it's just tight there I see a lot of people walking around yeah right by the playground they need a walking path there both Cuts that's [Music] did you look at all the pictures there we go see it kind of ends there and it's dangerous to walk along here but you could also walk that way too but I don't know whether you're supposed to well there there is a little sidewalk there that's that's still a sidewalk is that a side it looks like it's a slope from where I'm yeah it's hard to to tell in this picture but it's nothing like a wheelchairs no yeah it's not a tricycle compliant either maybe yeah but that's it's just they what they could do with that little Bridge any other comments or concerns I haven't responded to her yet all right thank you everyone for reviewing those plans um I'll write up those memos and share them and while we're waiting we'll open it up to public comment that looks like our public left I feel abandoned I do all right so we will Green Team left us the public left us we'll move on to reports um who wants to go first now we have a new report of the trails committee too so Landon do you want to go first sure um so for the trails committee a week ago was when we first met in the council chambers and it was a good attendance we were first you know introducing ourselves um looking at the order or the resolution that passed um to create the sub sub committee so making sure we understand what the scope of the actual committee is and then it kind of divulged into discussing what are the top priorities right that always comes up of what what what should we really focus on and in that particular resolution highlighting was the original rail Trails so that's um a pretty foundational project that we're starting to look at now for our next meeting um having some of our members do a little bit more research on the background gather some data and come together to kind of get a a feasible timeline of how that that can get done within Sparta but we don't want to put all of our eggs in one particular basket especially with this great open space uh draft that we have now so many great recommendations for Trails so some of the other interesting um locations that were highlighted so first the abandoned leehy New England railroad the other one was the Ogden mine railroad path and then finally was the middle school to high school path and the general walkill Valley location so those are the three locations that we're going to be really prioritizing for right now looking more into um but for the scope it's creating an inventory of General um existing recreational Trails like size location terrain some access points um building some sort of map for our residents to look at getting an inventory of our potential new Trail projects which easy enough is done by the previous work of the open space subcommittee so thank you for doing that and um then start to decompose this into a manageable sections and develop a plan so we're hoping to come into the new year with some general plans and maybe more particular plans that can then be um done in collaboration with the recreation um committee department and all the other stakeholders that are involved in the municipality County and so on so um definitely come out to our next one I don't have an official date for it yet but um we're really excited for it to get going and I'm looking forward to provide an update next time but that's all I have for that if there's any questions about it yeah had a couple things uh so thanks for starting that off um I believe the committee should establish a a standard uh predictable Cadence for the meetings so that we can put on the website and put the public can know that they meet on the first Wednesday of every month or pick a date or if it's quarterly or every other month but that that meeting especially as we get into the next calendar year that we should establish a a predictable meeting Cadence for the public uh and secondly I would put high on the on the um as part of your Northstar for the for the committee that to connect the uh to create a a wider Regional network of of trails to connect like the P the the trails that go into the Lehigh Bley area on one side and into theall Hill and Morris County on the other side and as we talked about before there's this Gap in Sparta so connecting to a larger Regional network is what was very high in the DPW the the D list New Jersey D list and I would hope that um that features prominently in your plans and I'm sure a lot of the people I'm younger in my experience with this but it seems like susus County and Sparta were really close to doing a lot of great things like Dan was just hinting at and really building an connected uh system and having it be uh really well done and accessible for a lot of different people but uh we reached kind of a roadblock I guess couple years ago or decade or so ago and we're just going through that uh learning experience now on on the board where we're actually getting the history of how did this kind of halt um really looking at some of the old data that we have from the planning suss County planning and engineering department and some of the other um data sources that we have we actually have some great great different board me U committee members that have different expertise and experience so I'm really excited to see that we can you know fulfill what was you know passed down none of this that we're really proposing is brand new this this is uh been in the Woodworks for a long time and we're hopeful that we can really shine some light my only comment with that though is this is a subcommittee of the recreation committee so I'm I'm fine with advertising and I'm sure we're going to establish a um a meeting schedule for the rest of 2025 and then that can get sent to the okay secretaries and so on and lastly you could work with the Town Township manager to uh if you need to find how I can set a route you how I connect two points with a trail um they can our tax department can provide you with a list of lots that we own or lots that are privately owned to see how you can feasibly make a uh any any connections that you need wonderful we're looking forward to rely on our professionals here they're they're great and they're wealth of knowledge yep thanks and one other um stakeholder that I would say that you should reach out to would be Tammy horsefield at the Chamber of Commerce if you haven't already because there has been emphasis at the county level um on the trails and I know it was mentioned at the most recent Chamber of Commerce meeting so that might be a good connection for sure we're really hopeful that we can work well with Tammy um as a major County stakeholder and then some of the other nonprofit agencies and D related agencies so very helpful and um we'll probably have down the line inviting multiple members like that to a meeting to discuss more so awesome we'll looking forward to report more there's anything new as well I'll send an email to everyone anything of pressing news thank you all right um should we go ahead to you Christine you know it's kind of um funny that I would be giving a report since we were all there it's true but so you're still our designat tell us what we witnessed you may have stayed the longest though so okay yeah yeah Kim stayed um um before I um mention uh What uh I saw happen the other night would anybody like a map of the trail Sussex County trail map I have that actually yes if there's an extra one I'm never going to deny it another copy of that yeah and we could leave any extras out front maybe see if that's enough so we used this during the meeting for the the trails meeting I have this already yeah when you walk into the chamber office they have it um have a stand where you can pick these up but um and it's I think it's a little outdated but it's got some great information about the trails to read about background so um so I wanted to mention that we had a fabulous meeting for open space um and Recreation plan and um I did not hear I did not hear any any concerns really serious concerns from planning board members or from the Town Council Members in attendance so I think this is bod's very well and um it was so well laid out recommendations um for many different projects and going forward and the emphasis on the rosi to be put together so that we will qualify for for Green Acres all that was explained so carefully and well by Barbara Davis from the New Jersey Land Conservancy so there is that and then let's see what else we have um um we had a discussion about um about cannabis a little bit and um a couple of people voiced their opinions about having a retail type of a store or a um sort of a growing area for cannabis so that um was an opportunity for the public to um weigh in so that was kind of of nice um and the thing with the the Cannabis location store location um we would have to go into our zoning to to change the Zoning for um whatever uh area we thought would be appropriate for two I believe one or two different uh locations for that if um this is something that Sparta um you know wants to have happen for their community okay so that's the Cannabis and then something kind of neat happened with uh the pdm2 plan development and resource management area which is out um out houses Road a little ways um and What U they did was they actually changed um a little bit of the Land Management code uh which I believe um limited the square footage for development in that area that area is somewhat protected I believe because I think uh I heard that there's only three uh percent impervious surface allowed in that whole section and that section is up against the um there's a Lake Association out there lake grenell grenell lake grenell so um that is I think a little Improvement to our code in terms of Environmental Protection from the planning board so that was kind of neat um what else and then there was the other thing that I didn't vote on because I wasn't um present when the there was a presentation but I know that our environmental commission uh commented on and that was the approval of the brandstone application okay questions for Christine Dan if it's okay we'll just keep moving down the table or you want to go sure um a couple things I'll mention uh since uh uh Christine mentioned it the we did uh have a discussion about uh cannabis but I want to make it clear that the discussion wasn't about the policy the policy discussion happens at the council level the Cannabis discuss for the planning board at the time was about uh the zoning only you know what because the planning board's day job is you know what gets built where so the any um comments or opining on it was just about the the zoning um in it of itself um but um but otherwise I thought was had a good discussion including the open space uh plan that we presented um the the this week's council meeting was canceled so there was no meeting on Tuesday our next meeting will be November 26 I want to say it's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving um yeah thank you uh next week is the annual League of municipalities convention in Atlantic City I don't know if anybody here is planning on going but um it's always a it's for um elected officials as well as uh administrators and other Township um uh professionals and and people that work with the on different committees I've seen it going there as well it's 3 Days full of seminars uh seminars start around 10ish and go until 5:30ish and then and then all the the parties happen usually in the uh in the evenings and I'm usually curled up in bed with a book before anybody um so I can get a good night's sleep and the last thing I'll mention is um November is No Shave November so I'm I'm grinning and bearing it for a month and hope you'll it's a our police department does this as a fundraiser and I hope you would uh look into going to our Police Department Facebook page and there's a link to the Facebook um where you can donate if you are so inclined and uh those are um maybe also mention because I was talking talk to rob a little bit I'm sorry and that um I had I'm I might consider at the council level to to resurrect the thought of bringing uh at least having a discussion about having introducing a storm water uh utility uh the council passed a resolution I want to say four or five years ago that U would keep Sparta away from this but that's just a was more of a statement at the time and resolutions aren't as sticky as an ordinance um but there are some very good things that can come out of a storm water utility uh and I think that's something that would deserve at least some consideration or at least some debate at the council level as to whether or not that might happen that that might be a good idea for Sparta uh with a storm water utility you would take the storm water the funding of your maintenance of your storm water systems out of the general taxes and funded through a utility and utility charge would be based on each property owner's uh contribution to the storm water which is based on your impervious coverage levels and uh homeowners and other and businesses could buy back credits by implementing storm water capture systems so it would be a good way to to have the people that use the system pay more use the system more that would pay more so it's there has a lot of benefits to it uh and um I think U it might be a good time to have that discussion again and that's all I have but that and then just going off of that that's something that we could have that conversation about detention retention basins uh rain Gardens planting native storm water like uh buffers stuff like that so it doesn't have to be yeah okay yeah so you could I think where you were going was um or maybe I'll go there for you is that you can there would be an economic incentive for a new applicant to come in here to try to reduce the impervious coverage as much as possible and and reduce the storm water contribution as much as possible there would be economic incentive because they would uh Pay Less in their utility yeah and that would count for homeowners as well you the more impervious coverage you can have on your home the motor water capture systems you can have on your home you would also buy down your coverage makes real good sense yeah I love that that's all okay um master plan subcommittee okay um the uh master plan subcommittee uh public survey was set to be uh shut down um on tomorrow on November 15 and we were uh debating whether to extend extend it for another week or or or more um so that we could reach uh a thousand responses um today we reached 1,02 so oh yeah it's that's that's good news to hear and we can close it um we didn't meet other than the the public meeting uh when was it last week I lost all track of time um uh so there'll be two meetings in December okay great be going over the results um any news on the grant yet no okay all right thank you so much um moving on to unfinished business as Christine mentioned um the open space planning plan and Recreation space and Recreation plan was presented to the planning board as well as some of our Town Council Members last week um in a public meeting we had great attendance there um so that was really wonderful to see um Barbara provided a final final version to us today which I did send out to you all um and then it also went to the planning board and the planning board's attorney so um hopefully on December 3rd they can move forward with the hearing as well as adoption of the plan so uh next planning board meeting I would definitely and it's not going to be a special meeting for us to be attending but um definitely one to watch or pay attention to um anything else on the open space plan at this point okay we've already talked about the Green Team appointment we will go ahead and move forward with that um I'll provide the list of folks who have replied uh via the emails and the reminders and I'll provide that to you Dan or give it to sure okay how many do we have oh um I don't have a numbered list it's more than 10 and less than 50 that's fine I'd have to count it yeah more than 10 is really good all right um final thing we had on our unfinished business was the Sustainable New Jersey certification it's been a crazy couple weeks and I wasn't able to get a to find time to try to get us together but I we'll try to do that in next week or okay in going try for next week wow okay is there any uh new business can I just uh say one more thing for the unfinished business for our quarterly speaker series um we had Dawn come today and then for our first quarter of 2025 I was thinking potentially we could have Jenna black who's the americore Watershed Ambassador she just attended training with the EPA about lead so she would potentially be interested if the commission's okay with it to come and present to us about um the threat of lead in water okay yeah I like that one yeah okay Yes sounds good and then the one other thing I wanted to mention this was something I said several meetings ago um this is an update from Cara Johnson's green Club at Sparta Middle School so they have been continuing with the soft plastic material collection um and they're hoping to reach 1,000s to earn a free TRX bench for the school so how the township can help anyone can bring their soft plastic material um to either Ocean State J Job Lot Kohl's or Stop and Shop there are drop off locations for your soft plastic material and then all you need to do is take a picture of what's being dropped off and you're going to weigh your pile and then send the information the number of pounds and the picture to Cara Johnson via email um her emails on the sparta school's website but it's cara. Johnson aa.org c a r a doj h s o n at sparta.org could you email that to us sure thank you can you describe soft plastic yes so that would be anything um think back to what Dawn was holding up the water like bottle plastic um the the wrapping that's around paper towels or toilet paper any kind of pliable plastic film that's around basically everything once you start looking for it candy wrappers chips yeah it just can't have the metal lining on the inside chips bags it's not it's not that um corn chips I think are any kind of like if it has the metal lining on the inside then that wouldn't be good but any kind of pliable plastic even pouches like um shredded cheese pouches that would be okay so it's really a lot of materials once you start looking for it so so you can use the food packaging like like as long as it's clean yep you don't want to have the food in it and if it has the metal lining on the inside that wouldn't be good that would just be regular um trash right but you do have to make it pretty clean is that the yeah it would be clean my understanding is so if there's food in it like a say um I don't know whatever whatever like something greasy or right you don't want gra CH is a no but like the corn chips I think you can okay can you if it's shiny on the outside like uh Fredo has shiny but like the Sun Chips don't have shiny right not not like that like more like around paper towels you know what I'm talking about like that thin plastic clear F like the chips and stuff those that cellophan or whatever like want that it has that you want you want like as you said you buy a bag of paper towels you know you know that bag right um that kind of stuff I saw a description where if if you can push your finger through it I don't know is that true yeah yeah it's supposed to be pretty uh thin it could be um what they put newspapers in if anyone gets newspapers delivered or gotcha like any kind of produ I could send it out there is a whole listing of what's acceptable maybe we can put that on our website yeah that would be great great um so I did drop some off and I took a picture but there was no place to weigh it that's what was confusing to me yeah I don't know how you're supposed to do that maybe just in your own house it's not in the store I don't think I think it's just like cuz I asked the lady I'm like I'm supposed to weigh this how do I weigh it no I think you weigh it at home and then you just put it on your scale put it on a scale with maybe yourselves holding it right to get the difference in weight a calculation oh yeah that'll be a lot yeah I had a huge bag oh yeah it was really easy when we did this when I worked at Pope John because we had the spring scales so we I'd have the kids come in you know after school and they' just hook up a bag and you know get the get the weight of it and then we would take it over there to stop and shop okay so weigh it at home and then take the picture guys I like spring scales aren't using power so that's good I mean do you have one in your house I don't have one in my house I might have to get one now I mean then we're not then we're not using resources to recycle resources that's true yeah and then it's all if it breaks it's all metal you can recycle that yeah how was the school advertising for that she is she is running the program through her um Green Team and I don't know if it's it might be on their website as well but she was hoping that we could help promote it absolutely there's a flyer I was just thinking okay yeah I I can ask I'm not sure if there is one but I know that there is one for from the scua has a flyer and that's it's the same kind of plastic that Don was talking about that you could either bring to the Lafayette facility or any of those locations I mentioned Ocean State Job Lot Kohl's or a Stop and Shop Michelle does the town have a spring weer no all right I think you could probably just like if you have a scale in your house you could weigh yourself right and then like weigh yourself again holding and do the subtraction that's what we do with luggage fishing if you had a fish scale would be probably perfect for that cheap maybe the post office has an old analog scale I can donate yeah all right anything else for the good of the environment and Sparta residence uh the last thing I just wanted to mention is that we should look at the potential dates for the Earth Day Fair because we are if we're going to do that again in 2025 like we did last year we're um going to run into issues with the school schedule and the Easter break and I know Easter's on April 20th well which is Earth Earth um week so then we have both the 19th and the 26th would be part of spring break technically and then if we went earlier we'd be the 12th which is the cane University event so we can just maybe consider that and talk about that at a future your meeting yeah let's let's connect Christine yeah and see if we can come back with a plan to everybody else you know I was thinking the other day the the environmental commission used to have a a pickup day twice a week twice a year I mean remember that um we'd go and walk the roads when was the last time we did that it was a year ago October in the rain was it that that was that long ago I thought that was in the spring who's the crazy chairperson that said I don't care that it's raining just that was a fun day oh that was last year um yeah we're definitely overdue okay yeah we need to do it um I usually try to coordinate a fall cleanup every year um the fall of watershed cleanup this year though um is FOC focused on one particular site and it's not in Sparta it's actually at in Blairstown where they removed the Palina Dam and when they did that the water level of the lake went down leaving behind all sorts of little mysterious Treasures of the deep so what we're going to do is we're going to meet at East Chrisman road on the 23rd at 10:00 and we're going going to be met there by um uh Michelle DeBlasio of The Nature Conservancy who was one of the river Specialists that designed the project coordinated the funding and everything and we're going to have kind of a clean up walk and talk and talk about the kind of the history of the dam the process of the removal and all of the benefits that will be realized uh uh coming down the line and now that are starting to be realized so um that's kind of the focus this year just to kind of celebrate that there's not a whole lot to pick up there um but it'll be fun uh you know learning about you know the dam and and why it's so important that we start removing these these structures so I have this little flyer I you said it was November November 23rd from 10 to 1 if you want to take a look at this and you can how many your fishing lures are going to be along the shoreline with all right any other announcements or I wanted to mention something that um I I should have brought up before in conjunction with the recycling presentation um it's surprising that we we have a refill store in town that a lot of people don't know about and uh I I just wanted to mention that uh well that's part of the of of reduction uh reduction and rejection uh this year they have uh refilled 27,56389 next to the astrology place where near uh yeah yeah they're they're not downstairs anymore oh really okay a while I love them I go all the time oh me too I did a I did a yoga class there last night I saw that I didn't get to go yeah all right anything else all right um do I have a motion to adjourn so move Chris all in favor second second oh second sorry second Neil and all in favor hi I thank you everyone oh sorry