There are 578 landfills in New Jersey and twelve of them are still in operation. Under New Jersey law, municipalities must receive at least 50 cents per ton of garbage that is deposited. The publication serves New Jersey’s condo, HOA, and co-op community with thousands of free articles on administration, finance, maintenance, and more. Every day, residents of central and northern New Jersey produce hundreds of tons of garbage, and once all that garbage is removed from their entrances and steps, most people don’t think much more about it.

However, New Jersey still has a 50 percent recycling target, and they continue to brainstorm ideas to make it a realistic goal. In light of the large fiscal and environmental costs associated with landfills, New Jerseyans can and should do much more to reduce their garbage heap. And once you learn about the fate of garbage, you’ll learn a lot more about the politics, money, and greed surrounding New Jersey garbage and its related problems. Recycling (New Jersey is the only state requiring it) has played a role in decreasing the amount of garbage New Jersey generates, although the recycling rate that currently stands at about 36 percent of the state’s municipal solid waste has been declining since the mid-1990s.

So while recycling seems to live up to expectations, New Jersey has a waste problem on its hands and everything has to do with money. In New Jersey, five counties have their own solid waste incinerators, five have landfills, and the rest have a transfer system, Gindoff says. As a state with scarce open space for landfill facilities and a large waste-generating population, New Jersey has long struggled to dispose of its solid waste. More recently, there has been pressure to remind New Jersey residents that they should also recycle their televisions, computers, phones and other electronic devices.