Increased Waste Due to Pandemic Have Forced Becker County Transfer Station to Adapt

DETROIT LAKES (KDLM) – The Becker County Transfer station is still adjusting a year after state covid guidelines were first implemented in the state of Minnesota.

Steve Skoog with Becker County Environmental Services says he first realized how significant the impact of COVID-19 was going to be when inmate labor used to process recycling for the county had to quarantine and he had no way to process any recyclables coming to the facility.

When state-wide quarantining was mandated by Governor Walz, Skoogs says the facility came to stand-still, but only temporarily, “not only did waste volumes drop, but then they suddenly went way up because everyone was at home doing yard work, cleaning out everything – fortunately we’ve got a fairly good facility that we were able to handle the increased volume.”

Over the next several months the Transfer station realized they were going to need to adapt, they built a new pay station to address social distancing requirements, programs needed to be suspended and ultimately rethought to address a “new normal”.

One of the new programs that has been developed through increased waste in the county is a reuse Program that allows materials to be pulled from the landfill and sold to residents for reuse. Skoog hopes the county will be able to develop a model where the program can continue long after the pandemic ends.