Maine
Auburn’s new recycling plan calls for weekly pickup
AUBURN — A new solid waste and recycling plan presented to the City Council on Monday calls for several robust changes to the city’s curbside programs, including weekly recycling pickup and providing wheeled, lidded containers.
Prior to a unanimous vote to accept the plan Monday, Mayor Jeff Harmon said the list of recommendations from the Sustainability and Natural Resources board will be reviewed during an upcoming workshop, giving councilors time to read the report and consult with constituents.
The committee process to look at Auburn’s solid waste plan, approved by the council in January, came after the previous City Council ended Auburn’s curbside recycling program last year. The decision resulted in months of debate over recycling, a beleaguered drop-off-only system and a new-look curbside program implemented late last year.
The city’s current recycling program accepts certain plastics, cardboard and mixed paper, but does not accept glass and metals. The committee’s report said the city should again accept all recyclable materials, including glass and metals, to ready Auburn for the state’s rollout of the Extended Producer Responsibility Program.
Maine’s Extended Producer Responsibility program for packaging, approved in 2021, will require most producers of packaging to pay into a fund based on the amount and the recyclability of packaging associated with their products. According to the law, the funds will then be used to “reimburse municipalities for eligible recycling and waste management costs, make investments in recycling infrastructure, and help Maine citizens understand how to recycle.”
The committee’s report said that by recycling all items on Maine’s Extended Producer Responsibility list, Auburn can access new funding to offset collection and processing costs for household solid waste.
Ralph Harder, a member of the committee that issued the report, said the committee looked at Auburn’s current system of handling household trash, recycling and food scraps. The recommendations center on ways Auburn can reduce its waste stream and its costs through better recycling participation rates and additional ways to divert solid waste — like a more robust composting program.
Harder said the amount of trash generated per capita in Maine is rising while the level of diversion has remained flat. He said food waste represents roughly 35% of the weight in Auburn’s solid waste, meaning if that can be diverted through composting, the city’s tipping fees can be reduced dramatically.
The report said Auburn should expand its food waste drop-off sites while also partnering with the school department.
Other recommendations include adding a city staffer to oversee the solid waste programs, and public engagement to better educate residents and track results. The report also says the city should use the Extended Producer Responsibility process to investigate other possibilities, such as incentives to limit household trash. Incentives used in other communities include limiting the size of trash containers.
Councilor Adam Platz said waste reduction methods must be considered, to avoid “doing this every five years for the rest of our lives.”
“We can’t just subsidize throwing away all this waste,” he said.
Councilor Ben Weisner said he’s “very interested in the composting component.”
Before he was elected, Mayor Jeff Harmon campaigned on bringing back a more robust recycling program. When the Sustainability and Natural Resources board was tasked with conducting a comprehensive review of the city’s programs, he said it was “unfortunate and a mistake” for the prior council to stop curbside pickup, and that that new curbside program should only be a “stopgap measure.”
When the changes to the recycling program were made during the previous council’s term, officials said negotiations with contractor Casella centered on what materials are being recycled and used in secondary markets.
When briefly ending the recycling program in May of 2023, Auburn officials argued that it is cheaper to send material to Maine Waste to Energy in Auburn for incineration than to pay for a curbside program, where some materials end up incinerated anyway. Auburn has also historically experienced very low recycling rates.
However, Harder said Monday that the committee believes the rate is higher than the 7% that has been cited in the past.