 |
| Fans, plastic fencing, plastic bags, water hoses, lawn chairs are NOT recyclable items |
For the
past 10 weeks, we have been part of a pilot internship program to reduce
recycling contamination. For the first two weeks of the internship, the two of
us, as well as eight other interns from Scarborough, South Portland and
Falmouth, had an extensive training at Ecomaine, the facility in Portland that processes
most of Southern Maine’s recycling and trash.
Every week, we attended meetings and
workshops with our fellow interns and discussed ideas to reduce contamination
in our communities and improve the recycling stream. Monday afternoons we went
to the Silver Bullets in Windham and physically removed contamination from
them. We were disappointed to find so much trash and inappropriate materials in
these containers that are only for recycling. We often found items like kites,
toys and books that could have been donated for someone else to use.
During
our eight weeks of curbside data collection and education, we reached over 900 households throughout the town.
At each house, we evaluated the bin, indicated the contamination on the paper
tag, attached the tag on the bin, and marked the tag color and type of
contaminates on a spreadsheet.
This way, we could observe improvement and see
the most frequent contaminates. The items we saw most often in
bins were plastic bags (shopping bags, pet food bags etc), thin plastic film (like
food wrap packaging) and Styrofoam.
During these long mornings driving
“The Leaf” – Windham’s leased electric car- we received a lot of positive
feedback and had great conversations with Windham residents. Many people had
questions for us and were very interested in what we were doing.
A lot of people wondered why contamination in
recycling is such a big deal. So, here’s what we learned.
The Problem:
Many items that people put in their bins
cannot be efficiently processed at Ecomaine. These materials, such as
Styrofoam, thin plastic film and trash (clothes or toys etc.), are what make up
the contamination that the facility sorts out and what is causing such turmoil
in the global recycling market.
The
more contamination in the recycling, the less desirable it is to buyers and the
less they will pay for it. As the contamination rate rose exponentially around
the globe, the countries that used to accept our recycling closed their borders
because it was so inefficient to process. This means that ecomaine struggles to
find buyers and they must pay to get rid of some materials. As a nonprofit who
pays dividends to the member-owner communities, towns are now having to pay
high prices to continue to recycle. This has been a burden on Maine towns and
some smaller towns discontinued recycling altogether. This is a tragic blow to
the progress of environmental policy and action in Maine and as towns and
residents we should do what we can to change this unfortunate pattern.
The Solution:
Ecomaine’s goal is to get the contamination
under control and to be able to sell the recycling and pay
dividends back to
the member communities, including Windham. The good news is that we have all
the power to eliminate the contamination and make this goal happen. Windham
residents can reduce their contamination and lower the financial burden on the
town, keep recycling out of the landfill, and contribute to a greener system.
 |
| Interns Abby Constantine and Meddy Smith (aka The Trash Girls) share their findings about Windham recycling with the Windham Town Council |
Recycling
is a very important process for us as residents to take part in because it
encourages manufacturers to use materials more than once, saves materials from
the landfills and protects our finite resources.
In just
the first month of the pilot project we lowered Windham’s curbside
contamination rate 4%. We consistently gave out more and more green tags and
less yellow tags over time, meaning that we observed less curbside
contamination. We hope that our education efforts reduced the total
contamination even further and that residents will continue to stay informed on
local recycling and keep trying to reduce their contamination.
To learn more about what you can recycle, go
to ecomaine.org or download the ‘recyclopedia’ app where you can search to see
if something can be recycled at our facility.
