DOVER-FOXCROFT, Maine — The newspaper you’re reading could, in a few weeks, be the box that holds your breakfast cereal or the pizza you’ve ordered from the local market, if you are among the majority of Maine residents who recycle.
State officials say Maine residents and businesses on the whole have done a good job of recycling, which helps reduce the carbon footprint, conserves natural resources and improves the landscape, benefits which are touted on Earth Day, a national event held annually on April 22.
That date is set aside as a time of awareness and a time to reflect on the environmental changes that are or could be made to sustain the Earth’s environment. Recycling plays a large role toward that end.
“Maine communities are poised to do better, they have good programs in place for the most part and the support for recycling seems to be fairly strong,” George MacDonald of the Maine State Planning Office said Wednesday. More than “98 percent of the people in the state of Maine have access to a publicly provided recycling program.”
There is value in recycling, not only to improve the environment and to reduce costs; recycling also creates materials for a secondary market, according to MacDonald. Newspapers, for example, can be used for telephone books, building insulation or to control weeds in a garden, he said.
“There are many things you can do with newsprint, and it’s the same thing for other recyclables,” he said.
MacDonald said a ton of recycled paper represents about 74 percent of the emissions that papermaking would generate if it were from trees. “We know that every ton of paper you recycle saves 17 trees,” he said.
Recycling also saves towns considerable money because it removes trash from the waste stream, and that reduces disposal costs, according to Bob Zirlin, a company official at WasteZero in South Carolina.
Zirlin, whose firm manages pay-as-you-throw systems in 17 Maine communities — including Presque Isle, Portland, Bath and Brunswick — said it holds residents accountable for the trash they generate.
It is estimated that more than 150 Maine communities have a pay-as-you-throw system, also known as a pay-per-bag system, in place. Under those systems, residents pay a fee for trash bags that either are color-coded or have a town’s name imprinted on them, or they pay for stickers that are attached to trash bags. The effort’s goal is to reduce the waste stream to save dollars.
People pay for how much they use, Zirlin said Wednesday. “What I always say to residents is, if you didn’t have an electrical meter or a water meter on your house, do you think you’d be wasting those resources? Everybody knows they would be.” In essence, he said, people who are very responsible recyclers are subsidizing those who are not.
Warren company celebrates
Earth Day year-round
Peter Horch tried to think creatively about his midcoast company after a conference last year, but as he said, there is only one way to put a shingle on a roof.
The yearly per-capita trash disposal 30 years ago was 1,100 pounds, according to national statistics, Zirlin said. Now, the national average has been reduced to about 900 pounds per person per year. “That’s 30 years of recycling education the needle’s moved a little bit, but just a little bit,” he said. He said his company has been able to reduce the per-capita trash disposal further through educational efforts.
A ramped-up recycling program and a pay-per-bag system in Portland has helped that city reduce its solid waste from 12,500 tons in 2005 to about 10,250 tons, Nicole Clegg, Portland’s director of communications, said Wednesday. The city’s recycling volume, however, has shrunk from 5,300 tons in 2005 to 5,000 tons.
Clegg believed the reduction was a reflection of the economy. She said efforts have been made to make recycling easier for residents by eliminating the sorting process.
Under a pay-as-you-throw system, people pay a whole lot more attention to what’s going in their trash bags, according to Zirlin. Not only does recycling typically increase, but people start to think about the products they purchase. For example, they may think twice about purchasing an item in a bulky package, or they may do-nate more unneeded items to charity rather than pay for their disposal.
Because recycling has increased, Maine communities are seeing a more significant impact from the diversion of trash.
Jane Jones, Howland’s town manager, said her community of 1,400 has had its own pay-as-you-throw program for a number of years. Two sizes of trash bags are available for purchase by residents, and those bags last year brought in $24,800 in revenue which helped offset the $51,200 in solid waste costs. In addition, recyclables brought in about $10,000 in revenue last year to help offset the $27,000 recycling center’s operational cost.
“I think you’re realizing more from averted costs than you are specifically from recycling income, because I think everybody is aware that the recycling markets have been very, very volatile. It’s rather unpredictable,” Jones said. She said the pay-per-bag system from her town’s experience has done a great deal in stabilizing costs.
In Abbot, which has about 640 year-round residents, the pay-per-bag system has not had a remarkable effect on recycling, but it has helped to shift solid waste costs from the property tax roll to the users, according to Jan Ronco, a selectman.
“It doesn’t begin to cover the cost, it’s just to help offset it,” she said Wednesday. Ronco said those who produce more trash pay more for its disposal.
Last year, the town generated 185 tons of trash. That is down slightly this year, mostly because of the economy, Ronco believes. The town’s cost for the transfer station which includes all garbage is about $57,600 a year, she said.
In recent months, Abbot also has switched to “zero sort,” which allows residents to dispose of their recyclables without sorting them, making recycling efforts more user-friendly.
“It’s very new to us, but it has increased our recycling significantly,” Ronco said. Under a contract with Pine Tree Waste in Hermon, the recyclables are disposed of in special containers at the transfer station and are picked up by the Hermon company for shipment to an out-of-state firm where they are sorted. The town pays the transportation of the recyclables to Hermon and that company gets the proceeds from the sale of the recyclables, she said.
Sandy Burke, Kenduskeag’s town clerk, said her community has had a pay-per-bag fee in place since the mid-1990s. Rather than bags, the town sells stickers and that revenue of about $9,000 a year helps offset the approximately $43,000 solid waste operational costs, she said.
Burke said that move has helped reduce the tonnage, but the town offers free curbside pickup of recyclables once a month, which also has helped.
MacDonald of the State Planning Office said Maine’s total tonnage of solid waste in 2008 was just more than 1.8 million tons and just more than 2 million tons the previous year. Those figures include approximately 700,000 tons of material that was recycled in each of the years, he said.
For 2008, the latest data available, the state’s recycling rate was 38.7 percent, which was up about three points from the previous year, according to MacDonald.
“I would say we’re doing a good job, but we can do better,” MacDonald said.