Talkin' Trash at the Library

Harry Sanders as "Trash Man" and Jeff Seideman at the "Cash in the Trash" forum.

If you live in Newton and you throw things away, you might notice a few changes in the coming months. After 20 years of the same trash removal service, the contract is up and Newton is looking at doing some things a little differently.

With options such as automated pickup (a truck that uses a robotic arm to pick up barrels), single-stream recycling (meaning you don’t have to separate your various recyclables from each other), and pay-as-you-throw (or a set fee per barrel or bag of trash you put out on the curb) on the table there is much to be discussed. So the Newton Free Library decided to hold a discussion.

The League of Women Voters organized a public forum Thursday night to try and make sense of this watershed moment in Newton’s refuse services, and figure out how to lower the town’s $5 million spent on trash removal.

Brooke Nash, of the Environmental Protection Agency, discussed the next steps the town could take environmentally and fiscally, saying that technology has come a long way in the past decades.

“In 1971 Newton was a real leader in state and nation in beginning curbside recycling,” she said. “Some of you will remember we had to separate glass by color, and maybe you could recycle number one and two plastic, but three, forget it.”

After Nash discussed how other Massachusetts towns have adopted innovative recycling plans to much success, Tom Daly, the Commissioner of Public Works, talked about Newton-specific numbers.

He said the Department of Public Works spends 35% of its $18.7 million on the removal of solid waste. Noting that the city spends $152 per ton of trash, Daly said the obvious goal was to lower the amount of refuse produced.

“If just 200 communities reduced our waste by 20% it would be the equivalent of getting 2.8 million cars off the road,” he said.

With the pilot programs of automated pickup and single-stream recycling underway, Newton will soon have an idea if these innovations can help reduce its trash output.