Franklin County organizations find new ways to cut waste with sustainability grants

With help from a total of $16,230 in grants from the state Department of Environmental Protection, three Franklin County organizations are planning projects to spread sustainability into locals’ lives.

“Funding these projects helps expand infrastructure to tackle waste reduction by reusing, repairing, rescuing and donating what we already have,” MassDEP Commissioner Bonnie Heiple said in statement, announcing the $162,375 in Reduce, Reuse, Repair grants awarded to 24 organizations, municipalities and academic institutions.

Expanding regional repair events

With a $7,500 grant, leaders at the Franklin County Solid Waste Management District have their eyes set on the piles of random items that need fixing in residents’ homes.

The district organized a regional repair event in May for locals to bring in their belongings for mending. According to Executive Director Jan Ameen, electrical technicians, seamstresses, Sadie’s Bikes mechanics, Swanson’s Fabrics seamstresses, Franklin County Technical School students and other local fixers mended 77 of the approximately 80 items attendees carried into Franklin Tech. Ameen said menders tied strings onto aprons, darned wool jackets and fixed jean zippers, lamp sockets, chairs and a 5-year-old boy’s bike.

Ameen described the expression on the boy’s face as he left the school with his repaired bike as “the sweetest moment” of the day.

“He came with a broken bike and he left with a fixed bike,” Ameen said. “It was really amazing to see the people who were doing the mending and darning, how meticulous the repairs were.”

With the $7,500, Ameen plans to hire someone to work with community groups and town committees to expand the repair event to other towns across Franklin County. Ameen envisions about four repair events per year in the western, southern and eastern parts of the county, with plans for the events to begin around June.

“My intent for this grant is to just spread the success and excitement of that May event out to more communities,” Ameen explained.

She added that repairing bulky items rescues them from landfills and saves taxpayers money, as towns cover disposal costs with fees and property taxes. Disposing of wooden furniture costs between $10 and $15, and lamps typically cost $5 to $10. Ameen said these prices may sound cheap, but savings can add up if the items aren’t disposed of.

“A lot of us have things that are broken, but do you have time to fix it or do you want to buy a clamp to fix just one chair?” Ameen said. “We basically gave it another round, another life.”

Repair workshops in Wendell

Plans for the Wendell Recycling and Transfer Station’s (WRATS) $3,500 grant include repairing bulky items instead of disposing of them. WRATS supervisor Asa de Roode plans to convert the station’s barn into a room for monthly workshops on repairing furniture, bikes, fabric and other everyday objects. De Roode said the money will fund electrical work in the barn, including the installation of a heater to allow for workshops in cold weather, and rolling carts with metalworking, mechanical, woodworking and furniture repair tools.

“I’m somebody that fixes everything. I love that kind of thing,” said de Roode, who often fixes items before sending them to the Free Store’s shelves.

When items are past the point of saving, de Roode occasionally takes a deposit for the disposal fee to save the town money.

“We have to be very efficient at what we do,” de Roode said. “It’s a big cost to dispose of bulky waste, so if we can keep things out of that waste chain, then that saves us money.”

With volunteers running the workshop, de Roode said the grant will lay the groundwork for the project, called “We Wrepair at the WRATS.”

“It’s something beyond the grant, because it’s volunteer-driven. We can continue to do it as long as there’s interest,” de Roode explained.

He described the Recycling and Transfer Station, what he called “the mall of Wendell,” as the ideal spot for spreading the word about sustainability.

“Our biggest issue is making sure we keep the lines through the compactors moving because people run into each other and they just want to talk,” de Roode said with a laugh. “People really care about each other and enjoy visiting, and I think that’s another really important aspect of transfer stations, because in small towns, it’s not like there’s a lot of places to just go and run into people.”

Hand dryers at the Franklin County Fairgrounds

The Franklin County Agricultural Society used its $5,230 grant to address the 1,700 cubic feet of paper towels that piled up last year during events at the Franklin County Fairgrounds, according to society President Michael Nelson.

Now, visitors dry their hands with automatic hand dryers in the eight restrooms. A woman who cleans the restrooms first suggested the idea a few years ago as a shortcut for saving money that was being spent on buying and disposing of paper towels, and also keeping the floors free of stray paper towels that miss the trash can.

“She had sparked the idea last year,” Nelson said, “and then when we saw this grant opportunity pop up a few months ago, it was just the perfect fit.”

After drying their hands, visitors can scan a QR code that is displayed on the dryers to access the Franklin County Solid Waste Management District’s website for tips to cut back on waste. With 138,000 visitors stopping by the Wisdom Way fairgrounds in 2024, Nelson expects these ideas will reach a lot of people.

“Most people at this point are really good at recycling, but there’s a lot of other ways that folks can upcycle or reuse products before they have to go back into the waste stream,” Nelson claimed.

He described the organization’s relationship with the Franklin County Solid Waste Management District as a “great partnership.”

“We’ve gotten to work very closely with them,” Nelson said, “and through their passion for recycling, learned more at our own facility about how we can be doing a better job to reduce our long-term impact on the planet.”