Recap of 3/18/08 Town Council Solid Waste Workshop
On March 18, 2008 the Town Council had a workshop with the Solid Waste Committee. The Committee has been researching potential alternatives for the town to consider in handling solid waste and gave a very thoughtful presentation. The Town Council had specifically asked the committee to investigate the options of pay-per-throw and regionalizing solid waste collection. The committee’s research included visits and phone calls to other towns and visits from and calls to a variety of waste companies.
In their presentation the committee gave information on the following options:
Pay per bag-North Berwick has a successful pay-per-bag program. They did public education before starting the program. The committee stated that it takes approximately 1.5 years to transition to pay-per-bag since the public needs to understand it.
If the town goes to pay-per-bag they should expect recycling to go up since there would be an incentive for people to keep recyclables out of the bags. Most towns who instituted pay-per-bag experienced about a 20% increase in recycling.
When asked about the charge per bag, the committee indicated that the charge would be based on an accurate accounting of costs, but said that the average charge in
Regionalizing collection-The committee did some preliminary research about regionalization options. They have not had enough contact with Berwick to know if that is a possibility. North Berwick does pay-per-bag, if
Pay-per-bag and
In order to move to single stream the town would have to put in a compactor. A drawback is that at the transfer station’s present location it would mean more heavy trucks going through that area to pick up the compacted single stream trash. Single stream would reduce labor costs at the transfer station because there wouldn’t need to be sorting done there but it would include costs to haul the refuse to the sorting facility. Ecomaine has a budget analysis program that helps communities analyze the potential cost saving for their program.
Relocating Transfer Station on 236 S & privatize-At least two companies (Waste Management and Pine Tree) that have high tech single stream sorting operations in
Curbside pick-up-Curbside pick up was discussed in the above option and in general. If the town went to curbside pick-up it would mean that the transfer station would only have to be open one or day per week.
Other discussion-Terry Oliver and Gary Boucher both commented on how well the transfer station has done with recycling. Since the purchase of the new bailer at the end of last year they have brought in an addition $25,000 in revenue for recycled plastic. There are currently six part-time staff working at the station.
The idea of an impact fee for dumpsters was also discussed. It was noted that dumpsters require large trucks to come in to pick them up.
Several resources were mentioned during the workshop:
Information on recycling in
Ecomaine http://www.ecomaine.org/recycling/index.shtm
April 14th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Privatizing makes the most sense, but I’m sure the NIMBY’s and Anti-Truck crowd will squash the idea before it gets any legs. Be prepared for a rare spotted turtle and endangered mosquito species to miraculously appear on the property in question.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:32 am
I discovered this weekend that the fancy new plastic bailer that the town purchased only works well with bottles and jugs. I was instructed to toss some #2 recyclable plastic ice cream containers into the regular garbage. If we can’t even recycle all of the stuff that we are supposed to than I don’t think we are ready to go to a pay per bag system.
Privatizing and going to single stream collection sounds like a good option for the town especially if the company wants to bring a sorting and maintenance facility to town with it.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:56 am
As far as the pay per bag goes, can you imagine the chaos there will be on a Saturday up there as the poor attendants have to count bags, colelct money and make change? Logistically it’s going to be a nighmare, and I have a feeling they’ll have to hire help just to collect money and enforce the fees. As with any government program, the pay per bag revenue will be swallowed up by payroll for those administering it. All of this compunded by the idea of closing the transfer station on Sundays, forcing us to all go on Saturday.
Oh the humanity!
April 14th, 2008 at 10:02 am
I was wondering why they wouldn’t let me put legitamate #2 recyclables in there. What a rip-off (for the environment too!). That’s so aggravating. I’ll either have to think of new ways to reuse those types of things at home, or stop purchasing things in those packages altogether.
Well….there’s an extra half-hour I’ll have to tack on to my grocery shopping.
April 14th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Nick–I should have written up in my summary that the way the payment is done is at the time you purchase the bags. If you shop in Dover you may have seen the Dover’s pay per bags at Shaws and Hannafords. They have a special logo on them and are the only ones you can use. The transfer station would sell them and they would be at local stores. You would buy each empty bag for the dumping fee. But your question about the administration is a good one. It would be great to get more information from North Berwick about all the costs associated. Maybe the solid waste committee has all of this information. The pay-per-bag proposal is on tonight’s town council agenda. I hope they will present more of the details about how this will work. It would be even better if they schedule a public information session so they could really answer questions and talk about where they see this going over time.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Thanks for the clarification Molly, that makes much more sense.