Lee County Integrated Resource and Recovery System Journal
On January 20th, 2016 our FGCU Colloquium class took a field trip to the Lee County Waste to Energy and Recovered Material Processing Plant. To say that this was an enlightening experience would be an understatement. We were told by the facility staff that they process 615,000 tons of trash each year. The entire reprocessing procedure entails twenty five different steps. There are so many different types of materials, and they need to be processed in different ways. All of the materials arrive mixed together and it is a painstaking, time consuming task to sort it all. The goal is to reuse or repurpose as much of the material as possible from shredding tires to separating out nails that can be used to make money. The massive amount of materials was staggering. It truly is amazing to see the efforts that Lee County goes through to manage their waste in a manner that has the least impact on the environment, is the most beneficial to the community and actually produces energy. This facility is the number one waste to energy facility in the whole country and this process should be the goal of all counties in the United States. I grew up in Naples and made a couple trips to the landfill as a kid, it is an experience that you never forget, the big mound of garbage, the smell and all the birds flying around. Collier County, like many other counties, is still using landfills. Seeing this processing facility first hand has definitely made me reassess my views of the waste disposal process. We throw things in our recycle bins sometimes, maybe cans, bottles or new papers, but how many times do we just get lazy and throw things in the trash can without really thinking about whether is can truly be recycled. Personally, I know I that I can be more diligent about how much I recycle. The positive impact on the environment if each individual makes a more conscious effort will be significant.
