Recycling growth is sought
A 'green' approach could reduce fees
Charging residents for trash or paying them to recycle is a debatable issue, but Winthrop officials are certain of one thing: Recycling rates must increase.
At one point residents were recycling at a 30 percent rate, but in just a few years, and despite the "green" trend, that rate dipped to between 22 and 24 percent, said David J. Hickey director of the Department of Public Works.
"I don't know that we've done everything yet" to entice people to recycle more, Hickey said. "When you pick up the magazines, they talk about green building, not 'green' trash. But we do have to be out there."
Through a partnership with MassRecycle, a statewide coalition, Winthrop recently pledged to increase its recycling of paper by 10 percent. By focusing on schools, the town's biggest user of paper, recycling has gone from 42 to 46 tons a month, Hickey said.
"Unfortunately, our overall trash tonnage has also been up in the same period," Hickey said. "We're recycling paper at around 17 percent and that's steady over the last month."
Under the town's contract with hauler Capitol Waste Services, recyclables and solid waste are combined into one tonnage rate, something that has come under fire from the civic group Citizens for Fair and Balanced Government, which contends that Winthrop's trash program discourages recycling.
"The town's new contract totally eliminates any incentive for people to recycle because of the fact that there is no benefit coming back for the community," said the group's chairman, Alex Mavrakos. "We used separate rates back some time ago. We would pay less money for recycled material in 2003 than for solid tonnage. . . . If we were paying separate rates, we as a community would be getting a financial benefit."
Hickey and Town Manager Richard White call Winthrop's trash contract unique. Winthrop pays a flat rate of $135 per ton, whether solid or recyclable, as long as its stays within a trash range of 5,800 to 6,500 tons per year, Hickey said.
"There's a financial component for a small municipality like Winthrop - we write the same check every month," Hickey said. "The contract by itself doesn't encourage us to recycle, so [the citizens' group is] accurate in that sense. However, what they're not telling you is that Capitol, for every ton they can get out of the trash stream into the recycling stream, they're saving money. Every time they take a truck to Lynn for the regular solid waste disposal, they have to pay $135 per ton."
Increasing recycling tonnage will help Winthrop be more competitive when the time comes to shop for a new contract, Hickey said.
Capitol's contract has been a bargain for the town because the rates have remained level for the past seven years, "which in this industry is basically unheard of," White said, adding that the town wanted to look around for its contract before renewing with Capitol until 2011. The reason it didn't request bids is because other companies, including
"At some point, our below-the-market rate will go away and we'll have to implement something different," White said.
Among the options is Pay-As-You-Throw, or similar programs that charge residents a fee for the number of solid waste bags they use, to encourage recycling. After the failure of past Proposition 2 1/2 overrides, town officials have unsuccessfully attempted to introduce a trash-fee program. After the defeat of this year's $1.55 million override, Mavrakos went to work with a preliminary strike of sorts, warning town officials that introducing a trash fee was not the answer to increasing recycling.
"I think recycling is down because the Recycling Committee was dissolved after the council took over and it's not an important issue," Mavrakos said. "We should not be paying excess money for trash removal so the town could be gaining excess money from the taxpayers."
Hickey said he favors Pay-As-You-Throw because it encourages people to recycle and because it's an "equitable way" for people to pay for the amount of trash they generate. However, he added that "it's not the only way to get people to recycle . . . Our override went down in flames, so I don't know that we have an appetite to do something like that. It's certainly going to be considered taxation."
A Citizens for Fair and Balanced Government phone poll in May of 2,000 residents, 17.5 percent of whom responded, indicated that 92 percent opposed a trash fee. With that in mind, and in agreement that the town's recycling rate must go up, the group's co-chairwoman, Cynthia DiLoreto, looked to Everett, which launched a pilot program with RecycleBank, a company that rewards recycling with points that can be redeemed for coupons to national and local merchants.
After meeting with company officials, DiLoreto turned over the information to the Town Council, which is scheduled to discuss the matter at a meeting at Town Hall of the Health and Safety Committee, which will be held Tuesday afternoon at 4.
"Why should we pay fees for recycling when this company is paying residents to do it?" Mavrakos said.
Hickey called RecycleBank's concept "the future of trash," but that residents should be careful not to "describe it as a financial windfall for Winthrop in any way, because that's not the case."
White said he welcomes discussions on options the town will have when it starts a new trash contract in 2012.
"Look, there's no free lunch. You take from one pocket and put it in another. Right now the contract we have doesn't have that pocket," White said. "Bottom line; the cost per unit to the town is much lower than any competing town, so that's why the two or three years that [town officials] have available to plan would be great."
Katheleen Conti can be reached at kconti@globe.com
