The Montgomery County government has extended its current contract with a private contractor for trash incinerator services at its Dickerson facility until 2031, but is planning to move toward a more environmentally friendly option, according to officials.
Department of Environmental Protection Director Jon Monger told reporters in a media briefing Monday that the county is looking for a more sustainable option to the incinerator at the county’s Resource Recovery Facility located at 21204 Martinsburg Road, which can contribute to harmful air quality.
“When you talk about what to do with trash, a lot of times people will say, you’re choosing between landfilling it or burning it,” Monger said. “I just want to underscore that I think that’s truly a false choice because both options are problematic in their own way.”
Monger said the county is planning to address this problem by increasing the types of materials that can be recycled and composting services. It also will support initiatives that would reduce the amount of trash produced in the county, such as a near-complete ban on plastic shopping bags proposed by the County Council, he said.
The short-term contract extension with Reworld Montgomery, the current waste management company, will allow the county to explore new options while ensuring the acceptance, transfer, processing and disposal of mixed solid waste generated in the county until April 2031, according to Moger. The contract includes an option for early termination by the county. It is not immediately clear what will replace the incinerator, according to officials.
The company currently collects the county’s waste and combusts up to 600 tons of waste per day in its furnaces.
“This extension allows us the time needed to evaluate and implement the best available new technologies that will help us transition to a more sustainable future while ensuring that we maintain the safe, efficient operation of our waste management system in the interim,” Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) said in a press release Monday.
According to officials, the county is exploring the use of new technologies that would allow the closure of the Resource Recovery Facility, which converts waste to energy, and to increasing efficiency and minimizing the volume of waste in disposal processes. The county is also implementing artificial intelligence technology, such as advanced optical sorters, in its recycling processes that will make it easier to identify materials that can be sold as commodities, Monger said.
“The county is looking at technologies that will allow us to sort the trash and recover marketable materials inside,” Monger said. “There’s valuable material in the trash. But right now, we don’t have the technology in place to sort through it, to pull it out.”
Monger said the “good news” is that recycling rates in the county are increasing, and the amount of waste collected is decreasing. The county has a 45% recycling rate, outpacing the national recycling rate of 32%, according to officials.
From 2018 to 2022, the amount of waste collected per person decreased by 11%, and between 2020 and 2022, plastic recycling increased by 110%. Monger said the county has collected more than 27,000 pounds of food from nearly 4,000 residents so far in 2024 through its food scrap recycling and composting program.
