conservation

The town is kicking off the summer review period of its draft Climate Action Plan at a virtual event on Thursday, June 29 from 7–8 p.m. Residents are invited to learn more about the plan and the strategies to reduce carbon emissions and increase the community’s resilience to climate change impacts (click here to register).

The plan — which was developed by Assistant Director of Planning and Land Use Jennifer Curtin and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council along the lines of other towns’ climate action plans — lists Lincoln’s climate action goals and groups strategies into six categories:

• Energy 
• Mobility 
• Built environment 
• Working land and natural resources 
• Water and solid waste 
• Social resilience  

More than 200 strategy ideas were received from community engagement activities during the spring that included workshops, focus groups and a survey. After public review this summer, the final draft will be submitted to the Select Board for approval in the fall.

When the plan was presented to the Select Board on June 26, board member Kim Bodnar was intrigued by one of the proposed strategies: establishing an “ambassador program” to help residents understand and access grants for weatherization, building energy retrofits, adoption of solar power, battery storage, etc. “Is it like a Geek Squad for green folks?” she asked. “That would be incredibly helpful — sometimes people just don’t know.”

“We heard from folks that they would rather hear [about steps they could take] from their neighbors rather than Mass Save or people who want to sell you things,” Curtin said. The ambassador program “is my #1 focus… it’s really impactful and not an expensive thing for the town to do.”

Board member Jim Hutchinson asked whether the town would need more staffing to carry out various elements of the plan, which will also involve extensive grant application writing. “We’re going to have to give some serious consideration to that when we have a real solid sense of priorities and timeline,” Town Administrator Tim Higgins replied.

“A lot of this stuff is kind of aspirational” and will involve more detailed feasibility studies, cost/benefit analyses and data gathering, Curtin added.

More information on the draft Climate Action Plan:

• MAPC summary presentation
• PowerPoint presentation to the Select Board
• Executive summary of the plan
• Full text of the plan

Editor’s note: This is a follow-up piece to the “Where Does It All Go?” series published in the Lincoln Squirrel in August 2022. Links can be found at the bottom of this article.

By Alice Waugh

Lincoln is doing its part by recycling and composting diligently, but there’s always room for improvement to meet the state’s ambitious goals for reducing solid waste disposal — trash, recyclables, and everything in between.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection’s 2030 Solid Waste Master Plan released in 2021 calls for reducing disposal statewide by 30% (from 5.7 million tons in 2018 to 4 million tons in 2030) by 2030 and sets a long-term goal of achieving a 90 percent reduction in disposal to 570,000 tons by 2050. To this end, MassDEP has been banning more items from the trash and encouraging composting, while recycling sorting facilities are working on reducing contamination and educating consumers about what and what not to recycle.

Trash and what goes into it

There’s a long list of items that are not allowed to go into the trash, including construction and demolition materials (asphalt pavement, brick, concrete, clean gypsum wallboard and wood) as well as tires, large appliances, lead acid batteries, metal, yard waste, and cathode ray tubes in addition to recyclables. In November 2022, that list of banned materials was expanded to include mattresses, textiles, and commercial food from facilities and organizations generating more than one-half ton of those materials per week (down from the limit of one ton per week imposed in 2014)

The largest category of waste sent to municipal waste combustors (a.k.a. MWCs, incinerators, or waste-to-energy plants) is organic material — mostly food waste. However, the share of those organics in the waste stream for WIN Waste Innovations (formerly Wheelabrator) in North Andover, Lincoln’s trash handler, dropped sharply from 35.6% of the waste stream in 2019 to 24.8%, according to the report for 2022. This is at least in part due to the availability of grants through MassDEP’s Sustainable Materials Recovery Program that helps pay for compost bins and implement programs.

Under an agreement with Black Earth Compost, Lincoln began accepting compost at the transfer station in 2019 (the company also does curbside pickup and lists what is and isn’t compostable). The amounts dropped off each month rose consistently year over year until the first quarter of 2023, when the transfer station accepted 12 tons of compost — down from 14.5 tons in the first quarter of 2022, according to the Department of Public Works.

The state is also working to reduce food waste from small businesses and residents by fostering more development of community and drop-off composting programs as well as efficient models for curbside food waste collection.

Years ago, transfer stations in Lincoln and other towns used to take construction and demolition debris as bulky waste for incineration, but that material is no longer acceptable in the municipal waste stream. Some of it (along with recyclables) was still sneaking into the bulky waste container near the metals container at the transfer station, but since the container became accessible only with the help of a DPW employee, the amount of unacceptable materials has dropped, the DPW reported.

On the other hand, the percentage of construction and demolition debris collected by Waste Innovations in North Andover has increased from 11.4% to 18.8% of the materials total from 2019 to 2022 for reasons that are unclear. The Construction & Demolition Recycling Association and MassDEP provide information on managing debris, including where to dispose of it.

The state monitors the loads sent to MWCs can levy fines on towns that include too many unacceptable items. In the past year, four municipalities — Arlington, Boston, Natick, and Quincy — have been warned though not fined by MassDEP for having recyclable cardboard in their trash, according to MassDEP spokesman Ed Coletta. Cambridge (mattress/box springs) and Watertown (mattresses and tires) were also warned.

Burning vs. burying

Back in the day, most garbage was sent to a landfill or burned in open fires, both of which had (and still have) drawbacks. Like many densely populated parts of the country, Massachusetts began running out of space for landfills, which also released greenhouse gases such as methane into the atmosphere, as well as other pollutants into the ground and water. MassDEP has closed all unlined landfills and requires the remaining few to close when they reach capacity. Most of the state’s trash now goes to MWCs via transfer stations or private haulers. Today it has only 16 active landfills, and three of those accept only ash and other waste left over from MWC combustion.

Those facilities are about half as energy-efficient as modern natural gas power plants, with an electrical efficiency of approximately 24% vs. 50%, Coletta said. “The electrical efficiency of a MWC is lower primarily due to the fuel type (i.e., solid waste) that has less energy content (for example, less carbon and greater water content) than natural gas,” he explained. Like landfills, MWCs emit pollutants, although they are regulated by MassDEP and the federal government to ensure they do not “pose significant risks to public health or the environment,” though the agency notes that it’s not possible to completely eliminate emissions from combustion.

As alternatives to incineration for nonrecyclable plastic, gasification and pyrolysis (heating in the absence of oxygen to produce hydrocarbons to make more plastic or fuel oil) are being explored, but there are challenging costs and drawbacks. Pyrolysis still produces carbon dioxide and other atmospheric pollutants, and it is energy-intensive, sometimes requiring even more energy than it yields. The mixture of different types of plastic and contaminants being pyrolyzed is also a problem. 

“There’s too many types,” said Jen Dell, a chemical engineer, in a 2022 Chemical Engineering News article. “There are too many additives. You can’t recycle them all together, and separating them out defies the second law of thermodynamics. It is just impossible to reorder all these plastics once they’ve been put into a curbside bin.” Finally, some also point out that pyrolysis does nothing to reduce dependence on plastics, since it only produces more plastic.

For cities and towns today, “the question of whether landfills or municipal waste combustion facilities is a complicated question – each has its pros and cons. Our focus in our 2030 Solid Waste Master Plan is to reduce the amount of waste that is disposed overall, whether it is disposed of at an in-state landfill, in-state combustion facility, or out-of-state landfill,” Coletta said.

In a welcome twist that was unforeseen when polluting landfills were filling up and closing, some capped landfills such as Lincoln’s are now being turned over as sites for solar panels. Lincoln has hired a firm to install a solar installation atop the landfill across from the transfer station that could eventually generate enough electricity to power all town-owned buildings excluding the schools.

Recycling

As always, the best approach to reducing overall waste is a combination of the “five Rs”: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot. (“Refuse” means saying no to disposable single-use plastic, coffee cups, utensils, straws, shopping bags, food packaging, and anything else you could replace with a reusable or compostable option.) Even though it’s listed as #4, recycling — in particular, single-stream recycling — is probably the most familiar strategy.

As noted in the Lincoln Squirrel last year, Lincoln’s recycling rate (the proportion of recyclables diverted from the trash) since 2012 has averaged about 40%, which is slightly better than the statewide average of 33% but well below world-leading cities including San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles in the U.S., which recycle or divert about 80 percent of their waste from landfills and MWCs.

Lincoln sends its single-stream recycling to Waste Management in Billerica for sorting and sale. A group of residents from the Green Energy Committee and Mothers Out Front visited the facility in February 2023 to learn how the process works and made this two-minute video. But they still had some unanswered questions, so the Lincoln Squirrel talked to Chris Lucarelle, Waste Management’s Area Director for Recycling Operations. Here are his replies:

Is it correct to say that anything stamped with #1, #2 or #5 is recyclable?

We prefer that we say “plastic bottles, jars, tubs and lids” rather than numbers.

Can other household items made of plastic be recycled along with cans, bottles, etc.? For example, plastic toys/chairs/buckets, reusable plastic kitchenware?

Not kitchenware, but we do separate items like buckets and crates that are bales and sold as a bulky rigid plastic grade.

What happens to nonrecyclable plastic? Can it be sold for pyrolysis or some other use, or does it all get sent to the incinerator? 

We are working on solutions for those miscellaneous plastics but we’re not quite there yet.

How big a problem is contamination of recyclable plastics with nonrecyclable types or other things?

Because we sort all of our plastics optically, we are able to make bales of just PET or HDPE [#1 and #2] without contaminating the batch. To keep plastics out of the paper when sorting, we are now automating our paper lines with optical sorters to extract any plastic that found its way into the stream. Sometimes it’s usable flattened containers that can be recovered and sometimes it’s film and pouches that ends up with the residue.

Do you expect to be able to accept black plastic as a recyclable material any time soon?

Some of our facilities have the technology today to recover black plastic, but not all facilities yet.

Aside from “tanglers” (plastic bags, wire, rope, hoses, etc.) that jam the machines, what do you often see in the recycling stream that should not be there?

Small camping propane tanks and lithium ion batteries, both of which are a fire hazard.

What about small metal household items other than cans such as old saucepans, metal pipes, tools, or other small hardware?

This type of scrap metal tends to jam in our equipment or risks injury to our workers. Scrap metal should not be placed in a curbside bin.

Are empty plastic medicine bottles considered trash?

Yes — plastics smaller than two inches in any dimension should not go in the recycling bin. This includes loose plastic bottle caps,  which tend to fall through the equipment at recycling processing facilities (put caps back on bottles before recycling).

I hear that small Fancy Feast-type cat food cans should not be part of single stream recycling – why?

They are often lined with plastic.

Is shredded paper OK?

Many of our MRFs [materials recovery facilities] accept shredded paper from commercial sources as an independent stream. When it is placed in the single-stream bins, it ends up contaminating the glass.

(Belinda Gingrich, who was part of the tour by Lincolnites, also noted that shredded paper and small scraps “fly about like confetti. Any paper smaller than two inches on a side will most likely get lost in the system and end up in the trash containers that reside under the conveyor belts.”)

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More information about recycling:

• Recyclopedia (created by Recycle Smart MA, a program funded by MassDEP), where you can look up almost anything to find out whether you can put it in your recycling bin. For items that aren’t allowed, the site also suggests other means of disposal, such as Beyond the Bin.
• Recycling 101 from Waste Management, which sorts the recyclables from Lincoln and other area towns
• The Lincoln transfer station
• The “Where does it all go” series in the Lincoln Squirrel from 2022:
  • Part 1: Single-stream recycling
  • Part 2: Trash
  • Part 3: Recycling beyond single-stream
  • Part 4: Beyond the transfer station
  • Part 5: The 5 R’s, and some numbers

By Rachel Neurath

Field Notes is an occasional feature highlighting climate and environment work in town and spotlighting Lincoln residents and staff. Rachel Neurath is a soil microbial ecologist, co-leader of Lincoln Common Ground, and a member of Lincoln’s Climate Action Plan Working Group. 

This May, Lincoln is joining the growing global movement to keep mowers in the shed until June. By delaying mowing, you give flowers a chance to bloom among the grass. Flowers provide nectar and habitat for pollinators like butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds. No Mow May is a chance to discover beautiful surprises, support pollinators, create a wildlife haven, increase ecosystem resilience, and store carbon in soil. The Lincoln Land Conservation Trust (LLCT) and Lincoln Common Ground encourage you to give it a try — even leaving a patch of lawn unmown can make a big difference. 

On Tuesday, April 11 at 7 p.m., I will give a Zoom presentation on No Mow May. I will talk about its benefits, share photos of my unmown lawn last May, give some tips, and open the conversation up to answer your questions. You can learn more and register here. 

Robin Wilkerson, ecological landscape designer and gardener, is leading the Lincoln Common Ground No Mow May movement. Wilkerson and other Lincoln Common Ground members will table at the transfer station on Saturday, April 8 and Saturday, April 22 from 8 a.m–noon where you can learn more about No Mow May. 

“Since learning as a child about the demise of passenger pigeons, I gained an understanding of the irreversible damage that humans can inflict on the environment. Then Rachel Carson wrote her unfortunately prescient book, Silent Spring, about the catastrophic effects of our war on insects. Those two events set me on a life course of being a committed organic gardener and attempting to live compassionately on the land,” Wilkerson says,.

“I am utterly buoyed by others who share this sensibility. Lincoln Common Ground is a group of passionate people who care deeply about the survival of species and at the same time we are trying to find ways to address the climate emergency. It’s a big task, but it’s a journey with a group that gives me hope.”

Bryn Gingrich, outreach director of LLCT, grew up in Lincoln. Last May, Gingrich’s unmown lawn transformed into a sea of violets. “No Mow May is a really exciting initiative because it focuses on an easy way for folks to improve biodiversity in their own yards,” she says. “It’s a really hopeful and positive way to engage with busy families because it’s actually less work for people and they can enjoy seeing more color and more life in their lawns. I think it’s important to recognize that this is a big culture shift we are promoting. Perfectly manicured and leaf-blown lawns are seen as a sign of care for one’s property. That’s why signage is such an important part of initiatives like this one. Signs like LLCT’s Pollinator Pathway signs cue passerby that the “messiness” is intentional.

“I also want to acknowledge that change can be slow and incremental, and for me just seeing small patches of unmown lawn or new pocket pollinator meadows popping up is heartening.

“One of the ways that LLCT has been engaging with our community recently is providing content on the connection between land stewardship and biodiversity, ecosystems, and carbon sequestration. This applies both on conservation land, stewarded by LLCT, and in Lincolnites’ yards and gardens. As part of LLCT’s Pollinator Action Plan, we’ve put a much greater emphasis on new plantings on conservation land that increase biodiversity and functional ecosystems.”

My family loved No Mow May last year and plans to participate every year now. We were amazed how many flowers popped up in our yard. I worried we might find more ticks on our daughter, but we did not. New research actually shows that mowing less frequently can decrease ticks. You can learn more about No Mow May here. So this May, consider letting it grow. 

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“My Turn” is a forum for readers to offer their letters to the editor or views on any subject of interest to other Lincolnites. Submissions must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Items will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Submissions containing personal attacks, errors of fact, or other inappropriate material will not be published.

Editor’s note: This is an expanded version of a piece that was posted on LincolnTalk on March 10. You can read Climate Minute #1 here.)

By Michael Moodie

Single-glazed windows – a blight on your budget and the planet

Heating and cooling our homes is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Windows (especially single-glazed ones) are one of the worst causes of the energy use that creates those emissions.

Single-glazed windows are like thermal holes. They are the source of enormous heat loss in the winter and heat gain in the summer. They have an impact similar to a hole in the wall of your house.

So, get rid of single-glazed windows. But don’t replace them with double-glazed windows — the future is all triple! Triple-glazed windows are no longer much costlier than double-glazed. A recent quote from Marvin Windows showed only a 10% difference.

Benefits of triple-glazed windows

Triple-glazed windows will:

• Save you money — winter and summer — for as long as you’re in your home
• Increase the resale value of your home
• Be much more comfortable to sit by in the wintertime
• Reduce energy use and related emissions
• Help you be a good steward of precious Lincoln buildings that may last hundreds of years, benefitting both you and future residents

You get a lot for your investment!

MassSave provides seven-year, no-interest loans for approved triple-glazed windows replacing single-glazed, plus rebates of $75 per window. (Note: Neither incentive applies to double-glazed windows replacing single-glazed. The Commonwealth is clearly promoting triple glazing.) IRS tax credits of $600/year (resetting each year) are available for qualifying windows, so spreading work over several years can bring down the cost further.

What’s it likely to cost to replace single-glazed windows with triple-glazed ones? The “installed costs” below are based on a recent price check. Since prices change fast in the window market, please take these costs only as illustrations for comparison.

*U-value (reciprocal of R-value) is the rate of heat transfer through the window. Lower is better.
**Assumes installation of about 10 windows at the same time, which lowers the overall cost per window; includes $500/window for installation.
***Assumes (a) heating with good cold-climate heat pump and (b) electricity rates at Lincoln Standard Green level. Does not assume any incentives, which may shorten the payback period by a few years.

A single-glazed window replaced with a triple-glazed unit will yield the most energy-efficient result. Another option, for windows that are fixed (very common in Mid-century Modern homes) or never opened, is to leave the single-glazed window in place and install two interior panes.

Adding interior panes to single-glazed fixed windows

The WinSert Plus from Alpen Windows includes two panes, one of which has a low-E coating, effectively turning a single-glazed window into a triple-glazed one. Efficiency will be a bit less than for a true triple-glazed but at far lower cost because the existing window doesn’t have to be removed. This seems a promising approach, but we don’t yet have reviews on it. We welcome input from others with experience with this product or similar ones.

Improving double-glazed windows

Energy-efficiency experts generally don’t recommend replacement of double-glazed windows because of the high amount of carbon embodied in them. However, such windows should be replaced with triple-glazed units if the seals fail or if exterior walls are being upgraded as part of a renovation or energy retrofit.

Older double-glazed windows with narrow spacing between panes, no inert gas (e.g., argon) and/or no low-E panes are only slightly better than single-glazed windows. For such windows (and even for good double-glazed windows) consider inexpensive ways to improve their efficiency.

David Green’s book Zero Carbon Home discusses options for installing a second/third pane inside the house. WinSert Lite (single-pane) and WinSert Plus are other options he doesn’t cover.

Another option for improving the performance of double-glazed windows is to install double-cell honeycomb shades and leave them down at night in occupied rooms, and all winter in unoccupied rooms. Blinds with side tracks seal all sides of the blinds, thus insulating significantly better than those without. Blinds Chalet is one of a number of firms that sells honeycomb shades with side tracks. Any reasonably handy person can install such shades by themselves.

The bottom line

There are many ways to improve poorly performing windows. They all have good long-term financial benefits, make your home more comfortable, and help you be a good steward of your home. For more details on improving your windows, see the recording of the February 28, 2023 CFREE Zoom presentation “Getting to Zero: Windows.”

Michael Moodie is writing on behalf of CFREE (Carbon-Free Residential, Everything Electric), a working group of the Lincoln Green Energy Committee.

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“My Turn” is a forum for readers to offer their letters to the editor or views on any subject of interest to other Lincolnites. Submissions must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Items will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Submissions containing personal attacks, errors of fact, or other inappropriate material will not be published.

Electricity rates will rise for everyone in the coming year, but the hike will be a bit more modest for Lincoln Green Energy Choice (GEC) customers, even those enrolled in the program’s “100% Green” option.

Because of the war in Ukraine and other global factors, “there will be a significant increase in electricity bills in January whether or not you’re in program, but green electricity costs will hold steady,” Paul Shorb, chair of the Lincoln Green Energy Committee, said at the second State of the Town meeting on November 15.

Earlier this month, Eversource announced that its residential rate for the first six months of 2023 will be 25.649 cents per kilowatt hour — a jump of 30% over the 17.871¢/kWh for the current six-month period. Before that announcement, Lincoln GEC signed a new one-year contract, setting 2023 prices for its three program tiers — all of which are lower than the coming Eversource rate. The new GEC rates will be 21.206¢/kWh for Basic, 22.316¢/kWh for Standard Green, and 24.018¢/kWh for 100% Green.

Eversource adjusts its rates twice a year, while the GEC’s rates will be fixed for all of 2023, so it’s unclear what the price differential will be for the second half of the year. However, for those who sign up for the Lincoln program for the first time, there’s no risk.

“People are free to drop out of our program at any time, such as if the relevant Eversource rate then drops below ours,” Shorb told the Lincoln Squirrel. “I don’t think Eversource has beaten us on rates yet, but it could happen. Even if it does happen sometimes, we hope people will stay in our program, recognizing how much it reduces their personal contribution to the climate crisis that is now in progress.”

The GEC program tiers are priced according to the proportion of clean energy they provide. The state already requires that at least 20% of a utility’s energy supply come from renewable sources. Lincoln Basic adds another 2% to that, Lincoln Standard Green adds another 20% for 47%, and Lincoln 100% Green customers get all of their power from renewables.

Shorb noted in a November 27 LincolnTalk post that some have asked why a spike in fossil fuel prices would affect even the 100% Green option, which is based entirely on wind power. “That’s a great question with an interesting answer that I will unpack in a separate post,” he said.

More than 10% of Lincoln households have enrolled in the 100% Green option, and program customers have collectively saved more than $1 million since its inception, Shorb noted at the SOTT meeting.

Town meeting proposals

To further the goal of weaning the town from nonrenewable energy sources, the Green Energy Committee will propose two measures at the Annual Town Meeting in March. The first will ask voters to approve adoption of the new Specialized Municipal Opt-in Code released by the Department of Energy Resources in September that includes net-zero building performance standards and is designed to help the state meet its goal of 50% greenhouse gas emissions reduction from the 1990 baseline levels by 2030. The code is a third option beyond the basic code and the optional “stretch code” that’s already been adopted by most Massachusetts cities and towns.

• See the Green Energy Committee’s slides from the State of the Town meeting

The second measure will ask Lincolnites to go even further by asking for the state’s permission to ban fossil fuel hookups in new construction or major renovation projects. The home rule petition, if approved, will let Lincoln apply to join a pilot program as one of 10 Massachusetts municipalities to institute this requirement. Only cities and towns who’ve met the state’s 10% affordable housing target can qualify, and the requirements won’t apply to health care facilities and science labs, as explained by WBUR.

If approved, the new town bylaw will still allow standby generators that run on fossil fuels to be used in case of power failures, Shorb said.