Definitions

Materials Management at the Salisbury/Sharon Transfer Station:
Definitions of Commonly-Used Acronyms and Terms

MSW stands for Municipal Solid Waste, commonly called garbage, trash, or rubbish.  MSW includes the mixture of everyday items that residents, businesses, and institutions throw away at the Transfer Station or through private curbside collection.  Residents who visit the station, put garbage into the GARBAGE HOPPER, and the recyclables accepted by the State of Connecticut into the SINGLE-STREAM RECYCLING HOPPER.  For residents who put garbage and single-stream recycling out for curbside collection, the hauler will unload garbage and recycling separately into the appropriate hoppers.  Our Transfer Station has separate collection containers for scrap metal, construction and demolition materials, Christmas trees in January and February, mattresses, paint, batteries and bulbs, residential e-waste, used tires, and items with freon.  Your User’s Guide to the new Transfer Station explains in further detail. The User’s Guide is posted on this Transfer Station website. 

MRF stands for Material Recovery Facility.  Our Transfer Station’s recyclables are trucked to one of five MRFs in Connecticut, where aluminum, paper, plastic, and glass are sorted by a variety of means including magnets, optical sorters, gravity, and forced air.  The sorted materials are baled and delivered to markets that can remanufacture them into the same products or something new.

WTE stands for Waste to Energy.  Connecticut municipalities truck their garbage to a Waste to Energy facility in the state.  Sadly, due to aging facilities, increased tonnage of garbage, and the 2022 closing of one facility, Connecticut sends some garbage out of state to landfills.

EPR stands for Extended Producer Responsibility.  EPR means that the companies which manufacture certain products (for example, mattresses and paints) are responsible for their disposal or repurposing at the end of their usefulness.  In Europe, many fields of manufacturing are part of the EPR program.  In the United States, Maine became the first state to include packaging in their EPR program.

AD stands for anaerobic digester, a form of commercial composting that captures methane to create energy.  Currently, there is only one large-scale anaerobic digester in Connecticut.   

SINGLE-STREAM RECYCLING, MIXED RECYCLABLES, COMMINGLED RECYCLABLES are used interchangeably to mean a collection of all the mixed recyclable materials accepted by Connecticut MRFs.

SOURCE SEPARATION is the term used when recyclables are separated at home and at a transfer station.  Our Transfer Station used to operate dual-source recycling with paper and cardboard separated from plastic, glass, and aluminum.  You may hear more about source separation as states and regions figure out how to best market recyclable materials.

Contact Info:

Hours of Operation:
Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri, Sat:
8:00 am to 4:00 pm

(Closed on Wednesday)

Sun: 9:00am to 1:00pm
(household garbage and recycling only)

Phone: (860) 435-5178

Address:
410 Millertown Road
Lakeville, CT 06039

Mailing Address:
PO Box 548
Salisbury CT 06068