By Nate Jones
Staff Writer
New blue recycling containers will line the sidewalks in South Portland next week as the city implements its new automated recycling program in an effort to stay “green.” City councilors supporting the change are hoping the larger, 65-gallon stand-up containers – as opposed to the original 15-gallon hunter green bins – will encourage more people to recycle waste rather than throw it away.
“It’s a much larger bin, you have more space, and it will keep paper from flying out of them,” said Councilor Linda Boudreau, who also serves on the board of directors for ecomaine. “I think it is going to make the city much cleaner.”
Boudreau said Pine Tree Waste trucks will pick up the new bins along with normal waste containers and transport them to the ecomaine facility in Westbrook, where recycled material is sorted and processed. Councilor Maxine Beecher said she “was amazed” at the efficiency of the recycling process at the ecomaine facility, which has been accepting recyclables from the city since 1990.
“It’s an incredible thing they’re doing over there,” she said.
While ecomaine doesn’t charge municipalities for recycled material, there is a cost to burn non-recycled waste – $88 a ton. Ecomaine Spokesperson Shelley Dunn said during an 11-month period, South Portland sent 6,925 tons of non-recyclable waste to the facility, an approximate $609,000 cost to the city. Finance Director Rob Coombs said cost of the disposal, combined with payments “to cover the loss of electrical generation revenue and debt service,” at ecomaine cost the city a total of approximately $1.16 million last year.
“The benefit of recycling is obviously the cost avoidance factor,” Dunn said.
South Portland isn’t the first community to implement an automated recycling program; Scarborough began their program in May 2007.
“I don’t know if people really pay that much attention to it,” Scarborough Town Manager Ron Owens said. “The thing people notice is having the curbside pickup and single stream recycling; people can just throw everything into that one container and not have to worry about it.”
Dunn said ecomaine has received nearly 3,000 tons of recyclable material from Scarborough in 2008 ­– a 14 percent increase from last year – which would have cost the town more than $260,000 to throw away. Dunn said out of nearly 9,000 tons of material South Portland sent to ecomaine last year, 1,950 tons were recycled.
“We want to make it so easy, everybody will do it,” said South Portland Public Works Department Spokesperson Michelle Sturgeon. “The simpler it is, the more likely people are to do it.”
Beecher said cutting disposal costs could help the city avoid funding programs such as the pay-per-bag system, where residents purchase specially labeled bags to put their trash into.
“Unfortunately the people who get hurt the most [by the pay-per-bag system] are people with families, and they’re the least likely to be able to afford the bags,” she said. “It’s so much easier to do it across the board and come together as a community.”
Residents can either keep their old 14-gallon recycling bins or recycle them at the Highland Avenue transfer station or ecomaine. Material does not need to be sorted, but any shredded paper should be placed in a brown paper bag. No plastic bags are allowed in the blue containers, which will be picked up by Pine Tree Waste along with the green trash bins.
For more information on the new automated recycling program, contact Sturgeon at the South Portland Public Works Department at 767-7635.