By Rachel Sawicki

TOWNSEND — If no one knows who they are or what they do, then they are doing their jobs right.

That’s what Jason Munyun, chief of facilities management for the Delaware Solid Waste Authority, said about the state’s trash-collection system.

“People put their trash on the curb, and it’s the last they ever think about it,” he said. “It goes somewhere safely, and bills are reasonable. So you know, if we’re in the shadows, it’s because we’re doing things the right way.”

Furthermore, Delaware is unique in its waste management because it does not import or export any trash.

Mike Parkowski, chief of governmental affairs at DSWA, said the agency never wants to be in a position like that of New York or northern New Jersey, which only have transfer stations because there is no room for a landfill. All trash in those highly populated areas gets sent to Pennsylvania or Virginia because it has “nowhere else to go.”

“We want to make it convenient for people because the harder it is to get rid of your trash, then bad things are gonna happen,” Mr. Parkowski said. “If people who lived around here who didn’t have trash collection had to drive to Cherry Island (Landfill in Wilmington), they would never do it. They’d either dump it at a store or throw it on the side of the road, which is even worse.”

“Here” is in Townsend, at the Pine Tree Corner Transfer Station. It was built in 1991, before Del. 1 was fully constructed, to cut down on trash truck traffic along U.S. 13. It still moderates such traffic today, plus cuts down on transportation emissions.

“Middletown, Odessa, Townsend, they can come here so they don’t have to drive all the way to Cherry Island or drive all the way to the Sandtown (Landfill, near Felton),” Mr. Parkowski said.

Delaware has two other transfer stations, in Milford and Harbeson, which were both built between 2004 and 2005. Mr. Parkowski said that, essentially, DSWA has tried to fill holes in trash collection, eliminating significant driving time to landfills.

Transfer stations have a little bit of everything in terms of waste disposal. At Pine Tree Corner, there are single-stream recycling containers at the entrance, which don’t require a weigh-in and are transferred to the Materials Recovery Facility in New Castle. In addition, people can drop off old tires, appliances or yard waste, similar to the drop-off piles at Cherry Island.

Mr. Munyun said that, for safety reasons, mom and pop trash haulers take a separate route to the residential drop-off at Pine Tree Corner after they are weighed in.

“We don’t want somebody trying to offload their pickup truck standing next to a garbage truck and all that heavy equipment,” he said. “So we keep them separated because safety is the biggest concern.”

According to Mr. Munyun, there are many people in rural areas who choose not to pay for trash services. Long distances that trucks would have to travel mean higher collection prices, so some residents, including Mr. Munyun, bring their own trash to a transfer station near them.

To that end, the Cheswold Collection Station is solely for residential trash and recycling drop-off. It’s $1 per bag to drop off household trash there, and there are four other collection facilities in Sussex County, in Bridgeville, Long Neck, Ellendale and Omar, that collect only residential refuse.

Trash at Pine Tree Corner is prorated at $85 per ton, which comes out to around 3 cents per pound, and every vehicle, whether commercial or residential, is weighed upon arrival. Between 100 and 140 vehicles come through the station every day, and it collects 240,000 tons of trash every year, according to Mr. Parkowski.

After weighing in, commercial collection trucks head to the tipping floor inside a two-story facility disguised as a barn. Once they dump their trash into the pile, an excavator picks it up and unloads it into a 20-ton trailer at ground level. Mr. Munyun said around four or five truckloads can fit into each trailer, which are then taken up to Cherry Island by a single truck.

“So instead of that many trucks going to the landfill and spending that much time on route, you just have one truck that leaves here,” he continued. “These facilities allow places to minimize their fleet, minimize their crew and get a much quicker turnaround and less hours and miles on the equipment.”

He added that transfer stations, while being a convenience for haulers, are also environmentally friendly — it’s better to have one truck making the long-distance drive, as opposed to four or five.

“Because we are so small, DSWA is able to look at the state globally,” Mr. Munyun said. “We’re trying to serve the entire state, not just one county. … With the authority we have, we are not just planning for tomorrow or next year, we’re looking 50 to 100 years into the future, so that the state of Delaware is taken care of, and we have places for waste to go.”