Recycling Gaining Grassroots Traction

     Volunteer efforts to bring recycling to several neighborhoods in town are coming to fruition after months and in some cases years of work.
     Residents of New Seabury, Southport, and Stratford Ponds have all reported making progress toward ensuring that recycling is at least offered in their neighborhoods. This marks a significant change from previous years when some residents would separate recyclable materials only to have trash haulers combine them with the rest of the garbage or were simply told that recycling could not be offered.
     “I think that is a big step, just getting the interest from the associations. You know the [Mashpee] Recycling Committee has been trying to work with them for a number of years now, so that is really big,” said Catherine A. Laurent, director of the Mashpee Department of Public Works.
     The progress dovetails with a push by the recycling committee and the DPW to boost the amount the town recycles by 10 percent through the next year.
     To illustrate the progress made toward the new goal, a sort of measuring stick painted to look like a tree, a playoff of the thermometers commonly used to depict fundraising efforts, is scheduled to be installed at the Mashpee Transfer Station by this weekend.
     Ms. Laurent said since an informational postcard was mailed to transfer station permit holders a month ago, she has seen a marked increase in residents picking up the free household-size recycling bins from the DPW, as well as the $20 composting bins. While in the past the DPW was selling about 15 composting bins a year, the department has sold that many in the past month, she said.
     Whether all the effort has had or will have a significant impact on the rate of recycling is too early to tell, Ms. Laurent said.
     Beneath the progress, however, is the Mashpee Board of Health’s bylaw requiring trash hauling companies to offer recycling of certain materials at no extra cost to their customers and to report how many tons they recycle, a long-standing regulation that has never been fully enforced.
     The town is in the last year of its contract with the private firm that operates the transfer station. And Ms. Laurent said the town will likely be considering whether to revamp its whole approach to garbage, including possibly charging transfer station customers by how much trash they throw away, while offering free recycling, in an attempt to make recycling directly economically beneficial to residents.
     Recycling already saves the town money, according to information provided by Ms. Laurent. Regular trash costs the town about $85 per ton to dispose of, versus $3.58 per ton on average for recycled materials, leading to a savings in 2007 of approximately $130,000. As noted in the recycling information mailer, that savings is the equivalent of 86 computers for the Mashpee School Department. It is also more than the entire Fiscal Year 2008 budgets for several town departments, including human services and shellfish.
     Also noted on the mailer, Mashpee saved the equivalent of 100 gallons of gasoline by recycling 250 tons of newspaper in 2007.
     Ms. Laurent said this week that, due to increased demand, the amount the town is paid for cardboard and newspaper has recently increased, so the financial savings is now larger.
     In interviews this week and at the recycling committee’s monthly meeting on Wednesday afternoon, the residents involved in the push emphasized both the financial and the environmental benefits of recycling, and the need to make the process as easy as possible for the newly initiated.
     Sheldon Gilbert, a resident of Stratford Ponds, said he received the blessing of the condominium association’s board of directors two weeks ago, and a pair of recycling dumpsters will be replacing regular trash dumpsters sometime in the next month.
     Mr. Gilbert said in a telephone interview this week that there is a core group of volunteers that will be going door to door at the 152-unit condominium complex, providing information on what can be recycled, what cannot, and which hazardous materials should be kept out of both the trash and recycling streams. The volunteers will also be asking which residents need a household recycling bin from the DPW, and will arrange for their delivery, he said.
     Mr. Gilbert said be believes personal contact, answering questions directly, and trying to tailor the arrangement to address people’s concerns will be the most effective way to promote recycling.
     He said the recycling will be co-mingled, so that, unlike at the transfer station, all the recyclable items can be mixed together.
     Offering recycling will initially cost the residents the same as their previous trash service, and may decrease the price in the future, Mr. Gilbert said.
     He said recycling is the residents’ “responsibility,” and they will be expected to do so once the program is fully up and running, whether at the neighborhood’s facilities or the transfer station.
     Two Southport residents helping to spearhead the recycling campaign in their condominium complex said at the recycling committee meeting this week that further research is still needed, but they may have found a scenario that costs less to offer recycling and trash than the development currently pays for only trash.
     John S. Brown Sr. and Deborah G. Weber said they have been working with the management there to find the cheapest and least intrusive approach possible to bring recycling dumpsters to the approximately 500-unit condominium development.
     Mr. Brown stressed the need to design a system with the least amount of hassle for the residents, in part by placing an accessible dumpster in a convenient location.
     Ms. Weber expressed concern about promoting residents to recycle food-related plastic products because people would not likely be inclined to wash them out and the items might therefore attract pests. But Mr. Brown and committee member Charles E. Gasior advised her to not be concerned because pests will not be able to get in the dumpsters.
     Down in New Seabury, Nikki K. Descoteaux has been one of several residents to push an initiative that began last summer and will continue through the south Mashpee development’s annual meeting later this month, when residents will be provided information on which haulers offer recycling for seasonal and year-round residences, which do not.
     Ms. Descoteaux, a member of the recycling committee, said she and a group of about four other residents have already given presentations to homeowners from all but two gatherings of the separate New Seabury neighborhoods.
     She said several residents have been surprised to find out that even if they have been separating their newspapers, glass, plastic, and other recyclable materials from their trash, most haulers in town still do not recycle.
     She said the grassroots group has focused their efforts in large part on education, including building an interactive map of the recycling facility at the Mashpee transfer station on the New Seabury homeowners association web site, www.peninsulacouncil.com.
     Ms. Laurent and Mr. Gasior both said this week that recycling seems to be picking up steam.
     Mr. Gasior attributed the new momentum to people becoming more aware of environmental issues, the limited natural resources available for exploitation, and the benefits of conservation for both environmental and economic reasons, he said. “We maybe just can’t feel quite as complacent as we once did,” Mr. Gasior said.
     Mr. Gilbert and Ms. Descoteaux expressed much the same sentiments.
     In addition to its regular recycling program, Ms. Laurent said the town will be collecting hazardous wastes on Saturday, August 16, from 9 AM to 1 PM at Mashpee High School, where a paper shredder will be available for residents uncomfortable with putting bills or other sensitive documents into the standard paper recycling stream.