The Solid Waste and Recycling Facilities Workgroup considered a very preliminary draft of regulations that would cover various types of recycling facilities at its meeting on October 23, 2018. The regulations will eventually set operational, enforcement, and (potentially for certain types of facilities) permitting requirements.
The Workgroup was created by the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) in response to 2017 legislation (HB 124) that requires MDE to adopt regulations governing recycling facilities. The legislation also required that the regulations be developed in consultation with MACo and other stakeholder groups. The Workgroup includes county, solid waste and recycling industry, and environmental representatives. MACo Legal and Policy Counsel Les Knapp is the MACo representative on the Workgroup.
The preliminary draft regulations include specific operational requirements for different categories of recycling facilities, including: (1) asphalt and concrete recycling; (2) paper and cardboard recycling; (3) glass, metal, and plastic recycling; (4) plastic depolymerization; (5) electronic devices consolidation or recycling; and (6) single-stream recycling. A separate workgroup is looking at regulations for anaerobic digestion facilities and that workgroup’s recommendations will be incorporated into the regulations proposed by the Solid Waste Workgroup.
The Workgroup plans on having a formal draft of the regulations by December of 2018 and a revised draft of the regulations by February of 2019. The regulations would be formally proposed and subject to open public comment in July or August of 2019. MDE would like to finalize promulgated regulations by December of 2019.
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