In My Community

Farmington's History

After meeting several time with Russ Arnold, Farmington's head of Public Works, I would say Farmington has done a good job at maintaining it's waste. To the visible eye the streets aren't lined with garbage, but the occasional bottle does fall of the garbage truck every now and then. Farmington has taken many steps over the years to reduce waste. In 2008 the town switched over to automatic garbage collection and in 2011 the larger recycling bins were introduced. This made it more convenient for residents to properly dispose of their items. These larger recycling bins have a diagram on the lid explaining what can be put in them and what can't. The town also sends out semiannual flyers with instructions and tips that are also posted on the town website. The information on how to dispose of waste correctly is easily accessible to all residents which is helpful in maintaining a town with low waste levels.

Farmington also offers a hazardous waste collection three times a year for no additional cost. They work collaboratively with Avon, Simsbury, Canton, Granby and East Granby to cut costs and keep waste low. Farmington has tried to get residents to reduce more by influencing the kids in the town, but unfortunately the schools were not as cooperative as they needed to be.

Something the town is working on is bringing back textile recycling by working with Simply Recycling in New Britain, CT. Recycling could also be picked up every week as apposed to the current bi weekly pick up.

The biggest obstacle town officials have faced is getting people to see the reason to change. Since Farmington and it's 28.8 sq. miles isn't polluted residents don't see a problem. They also don't recognize how the bottle they throw away can end up drifting to one of the most remote parts of the world. Until people decide to change there isn't much officials can do that the public will agree with.

Pay As You Throw programs have been becoming more and more popular. The idea is that residents would have to buy special garbage bags and then would be charged for waste by the number of bags they throw away each week. So the incentive is to throw away less to pay less. The issue most towns face is the public seeing this as a double tax.

town comparison data

I started my town evaluation by looking at the MIRA tonnage reports of solid municipal waste and recycling for my town, neighboring towns, and towns of a similar size. The tonnage reports were available for 2015 and on and I could get town populations up until 2017, so my data is from 2015-2017. You can look closer at my exact data below.

Farmington's population has decreased, but the amount of trash per person had increased.

Avon is a neighboring town with with a slightly smaller population. They followed the same trend as Farmington because their population has been decreasing and the trash per person has been increasing. Avon also had the most trash per person out of all four towns

Weathersfield is a Connecticut town with a similar size to Farmington. Their population has decreased but their trash went down then up higher than it previously was. This dip was also the lowest amount of trash per person out of the four towns I looked at.

Simsbury is a neighboring town with a similar population size. Their population has increased and their trash per person had decreased.

Between Farmington, Avon and Wethersfield, Avon was the town that recycles the most per person. All of the towns followed the same pattern of an increase followed by a decrease. However Farmington drastically increased their recycling between 2015 and 2016.

If you were to average all the waste per person in 2017 from all four towns it comes out to about .5700 tons a year which is 1,140 pounds a year, or 21 pounds a week, or 3 pounds a day. Any way you look at the numbers, most towns could benefit from changing the amount of waste their residents produce. If you average the recycling for 2017 it comes out to be .1056 tons per person. Now if you add this to the average garbage amount, each person disposes about .6756 tons a year and only 15.6% of that amount is recycled.

Population density didn't seem to have much of an effect on waste per person. Weathersfield had a density of 2,003 and Simsbury had a density of 727. These were the two extreme values yet they had the lowest waste amount per person in 2017 out of the four.

*** It should be noted that this data came from the MIRA reports. The tonnage numbers include residential and commercial. It is also possible that garbage could be mixed in from other towns if a private company is being used. The report is based on the amount each town was charged with. It is also not clear how much of the items that are sent to recycling were actually not recyclable. This of course would increase the SMW tonnage numbers. Due to these uncertainties the towns and I can't identify exactly how much waste people are producing. It should also be noted that Simsbury has not data for recycling because they use private companies chosen my residents or a recycling center and therefore do not have a singular place for recycling. ***

My Family comparison:

I was able to get my weekly household waste down to one bag a week. Each bag weighs roughly 5 pounds. If you multiply that by 52 weeks the average weight of trash for one year for my family of four would be 260 pounds. This is equivalent to .13 tons a year. Using the average from above, a regular family of four would produce 2.28 tons a year. Now the average does include waste from more than just homes, but even if that wasn't the case there is still a significant amount of difference between my house and the average house.