Tompkins County can trace recycling’s first stop. After that, the paper trail blurs.

Public records identify processors for most material collected locally. But pooled recycling streams, incomplete destination fields and weaknesses documented by state auditors prevent the public from following every ton to a final manufacturer.

When Tompkins County residents place bottles, cans, cardboard and paper at the curb, the material enters a system with a clearly documented beginning. Casella Waste Systems collects the countywide curbside stream and transports it to the county-owned Recycling and Solid Waste Center on Commercial Avenue in Ithaca. In 2025, that system served approximately 48,511 homes and 2,230 small businesses, according to the Tompkins County Department of Recycling and Materials Management’s annual report.

The county reported receiving and transferring 9,230 tons of single-stream recycling during 2025, plus 659 tons of corrugated cardboard and 944 tons of other recyclable material at its drop-off area. Casella, which operates the center as well as the curbside collection program, describes the Ithaca property as a transfer station where material is collected, sorted and transported to another recycling, organics or disposal facility. Tompkins County identifies Casella as its collection and facility contractor, while Casella describes the local operation on its website.

Those records establish collection and the first handoff. They do not, by themselves, establish that every item placed in a recycling bin became a new product.

The first destinations are largely documented

The most detailed public destination record is the Recycling and Solid Waste Center’s annual filing with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. The latest filing available in DEC’s public directory covers 2024.

That report says 9,751.98 tons of Tompkins County single-stream material were transferred to Casella’s regional materials recovery facility at 3555 County Road 49 in Stanley, Ontario County. It also identifies first destinations for most of the source-separated material handled in Ithaca. The complete 2024 facility filing is available through DEC.

Material reported in 2024	Tons	First reported destination
Single-stream recycling	9,751.98	Casella Recycling, Stanley
Corrugated cardboard	545.40	RockTenn/Solvay Paper, Syracuse
Clean glass	36.91	TOMRA, Farmington
Scrap metal	585.42	Teets & Sons, Newfield
Propane tanks	4.86	Cemco, Auburn
Rigid plastics	17.42	Granite Peak Plastics, St. Louis
Electronics	99.29	REACT, Horseheads
Textiles	8.45	St. Pauly Textile, Farmington
Tires	121.72	Geiter Done of WNY, Buffalo
Food scraps	738.59	Cayuga Compost, Trumansburg
Yard trimmings	391.98	Cayuga Compost, Trumansburg
Fats, oils and grease	3.08	Buffalo Biodiesel, Syracuse

This confirms that the county can identify the next facility for nearly all material passing through its center. The county’s adopted solid-waste plan likewise says single-stream loads are shipped to the Casella facility in Ontario County, while commercial cardboard and office paper can be baled in Ithaca and sent directly to a mill. The plan, “Rethinking Waste in Tompkins County,” was finalized in 2025.

There is, however, a small but measurable local reporting gap. The 2024 filing records 32.98 tons of nonferrous metal, 9.76 tons of lead-acid batteries, 1.64 tons of lithium or nickel-cadmium batteries and 0.38 tons of cellphone batteries received in Ithaca. Those categories—44.76 tons combined—do not have corresponding destinations in the report’s recovered-material tables, and the filing says no attachments were included. That does not prove the materials were improperly handled; it means their destinations cannot be determined from this public filing alone. The figures come from the facility’s certified 2024 DEC report.

What happens in Stanley is harder to assign to Tompkins County

At the Ontario County facility, Tompkins County recycling is combined with material from other communities. Casella’s 2024 filing says the plant received 36,893.67 tons of single-stream material and 44,878.13 tons of material overall. Its outbound report lists recovered paper, cardboard, glass, metals and plastics shipped to markets in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Quebec and elsewhere. Casella’s Ontario materials recovery facility report is also public through DEC.

The same report records 3,483.58 tons of residue sent to an unidentified destination in Ontario County. Residue is the contamination and unmarketable material removed during processing and ultimately disposed of. It represented about 7.8% of the Stanley facility’s total reported 2024 intake, based on the figures in Casella’s filing.

That percentage should not be assigned directly to Tompkins County. The facility report pools material from multiple service areas and gives one facility-wide list of recovered commodities and destinations. It does not show how much of Tompkins County’s load became paper, plastic, glass, metal or residue.

The destination list also identifies many receiving markets only by city, county or state—not by the facility names and street addresses requested on DEC’s reporting form. Consequently, the record can show that recovered PET plastic went to places including North Carolina and Georgia, for example, but it cannot always identify the company that received it or independently confirm that company’s receiving weight. See Attachment C of the Stanley facility’s 2024 filing.

The local paperwork reflects a statewide problem

DEC says permitted and registered recyclables-handling facilities must file annual reports documenting the quantity, type and origin of material received, along with recovered-material destinations. The reports are self-certified by facility operators, while the underlying operating records must be retained for inspection. DEC explains those requirements on its recyclables-handling facility page.

An August 2026 audit from the Office of State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found that this oversight system frequently lacked complete or verifiable information. Auditors reviewed DEC’s monitoring of 406 recyclables-handling and recovery facilities from 2021 through 2023. Of 695 annual reports examined, 443 were incomplete in at least one major section and 433 lacked a residue rate. The findings appear in the comptroller’s audit, Report 2024-S-28.

Auditors then sought supporting records for 165 reports filed by 55 facilities. Reported quantities matched adequate documentation in only 21% of the material-received entries, 9% of recovered-material entries and 6% of residue entries. The comptroller cautioned that this was a nonstatistical sample, so those percentages cannot be projected across every New York recycling facility—or treated as findings about Tompkins County specifically. The audit details its sampling limitations and documentation results.

DEC disputed part of the comptroller’s characterization. Auditors counted 341 designated recycling-facility reports as not received, but 308 of those facilities had filed a different type of annual report. DEC said it has long accepted transfer-station forms from facilities conducting both activities. The comptroller responded that transfer forms do not contain everything needed to calculate residue rates. DEC generally accepted the audit’s recommendations and said it would work on improved reporting controls, classifications and inspection procedures. DEC’s response and the comptroller’s comments are included in the audit.

That disagreement has a direct local parallel. DEC’s active-facility list identifies the Tompkins County center as a permitted recyclables-handling and recovery facility, with a permit expiring in 2029. Yet its 2024 filing uses a transfer-facility form and marks “No” when asked whether it is also a permitted or registered recyclables-handling facility. The filing still reports recycling quantities and first destinations, but its classification appears inconsistent with DEC’s permitted-facility list. Neither that discrepancy nor the state audit establishes that Tompkins County’s reported tonnage is inaccurate; it demonstrates the form-and-classification problem auditors said makes statewide comparisons difficult.

The county has authority to demand more detail

Tompkins County law already creates a local reporting chain. People and organizations collecting regulated recyclables and other recoverable materials must provide annual reports to the county’s solid-waste manager, who must submit a summary to the County Legislature. Licensed haulers must also maintain separate records of recyclables collected, transported or disposed of. Those requirements appear in Section 140-8 of the Tompkins County Code.

The county’s public annual report summarizes collection tonnage and programs, but it does not publish a commodity-level mass balance, the licensed haulers’ underlying reports, receiving-facility confirmations or a Tompkins-specific residue estimate. Those records may exist internally or in contractor files; they are not present in the public documents reviewed for this story.

A stronger public accounting would reconcile inbound scale weights with outbound loads, name each receiving facility, publish the regional processor’s residue rate, identify major changes in markets and provide receiving weights or other confirmation from downstream processors. Where material is pooled, the county could clearly label any result as a proportional estimate rather than claiming to follow individual bottles or sheets of paper.

Recycling transparency is only part of the answer

Zero Waste Ithaca argues that the community should reduce its dependence on disposable products instead of treating recycling as the complete solution. The organization prioritizes source reduction, reuse and policy changes, and has cautioned that plastics recycling rates are too low to solve the larger plastic-waste problem. Zero Waste Ithaca describes its source-reduction mission here and its position on plastic recycling in its reuse campaign materials.

That approach is broadly consistent with the county’s stated “4Rs” hierarchy: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rethink. The county’s 2025 report says its materials-management strategy is intended to maximize diversion through all four—not recycling alone. See the mission statement in TCRMM’s 2025 annual report.

So, does Tompkins County know where every recyclable goes?

The most defensible answer is no—not from the public record, and not through to a final new product. The county can document collection, the Commercial Avenue transfer point and the first reported destination for most material. For single-stream recycling, it can trace the load to Casella’s Stanley facility, whose annual report identifies broad downstream markets.

But once Tompkins County’s material enters a pooled regional stream, the records no longer distinguish its paper, plastics, glass, metals and residue from everybody else’s. Several local material categories also lack named destinations in the 2024 filing, while some destinations in the regional report are geographic labels rather than identifiable receiving companies.

There is no evidence in the records reviewed that Tompkins County or Casella deliberately sent properly marketable recyclables to a landfill or misrepresented the collection program. The unresolved issue is narrower but important: “collected for recycling” and “transferred to a processor” are documented claims. “Every ton was made into a new product” is not yet a claim the publicly available records can prove.

Reporting note: This documentary analysis is based on publicly available county, operator, DEC and advocacy records reviewed through Aug. 12, 2026. No interviews or nonpublic contractor records were included.