Middletown Will Build An Eco-Garden At Town Recycling Center

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — Middletown Twp. announced Thursday, Earth Day, that it will be building an eco-garden at the town recycling center, and that construction will begin this summer.

The eco-garden will be built at the front entrance of the Public Works Administration Building (52 Kanes Lane).

A map of how the eco-garden will look is above. The garden will have composting areas, native plants, a pond, a "garbage garden" and even an outdoor classroom area so Middletown schoolchildren can learn about this unique public facility.

Also, the Twp. announced it will be making a series of upgrades to the town recycling center, which will require Middletown to open a temporary recycling center next to the current center and the satellite recycling center (located at the Middletown Train Station).

Middletown said its Recycling Center became increasingly well used, especially in the past year of the COVID pandemic.

As more people stayed home and shopped online, the number of items discarded at the town Recycling Center has risen "significantly."

“The impacts of COVID brought to light the need to make these upgrades,” said Middletown Public Works Director Ted Maloney. “We are thrilled to see people disposing of items such as cardboard, plastics, and Styrofoam in the proper way and we want to continue to encourage this by increasing the capacity of what the Recycling Center can handle.”

Improvements to the Middletown Recycling Center will include:

• Increasing access and efficiency to the recycling drop-off bins
• Improving traffic circulation
• Allowing room for the expansion of recyclable commodities in the future
• Ensuring ADA compliance to both the Middletown Recycling Center and Administrative Building
• Building the eco-garden

Middletown will pay for the upgrades using a combination of municipal tonnage grants, ADA funding, and revenue from the resale of recyclables.

Once the upgrades are made, Middletown will be able to expand the tonnage and quality of recycling it can accept, which the town says will result in greater access to grant monies and a higher revenue for recyclable products.

“Every step we take to increase our recycling efforts has tangible environmental, economic, and operational benefits for our township,” said Mayor Tony Perry. “These improvements will not only help us better accommodate our residents, but also create a cleaner recycling stream that will decrease the Township’s tipping fees at our county landfill, reduce waste, and decrease gas emissions.”

More about the Middletown eco-garden at the Recycling Center:

Once it's open, the eco-garden will be included in educational tours of the Recycling Center that Middletown currently provides to children of all ages.

Tour groups will have the opportunity to walk through the “Garbage Garden” and see creative ways to repurpose items that were disposed of at the Recycling Center.

Visitors will also see an example of a rain garden that uses “catchment systems” to water native New Jersey plants. They will also have the opportunity to plant their own seeds using the leaf compost that was collected during the Township’s curbside leaf pickup.

Be the first to know. Sign up to get Patch emails: https://patch.com/subscribe Contact this Patch reporter: Carly.baldwin@patch.com