PAYT

In honor of Earth Day, I thought I would tell you about the efforts in my town to increase recycling and reduce waste.

We have in our town a “transfer station.” It’s the town dump. As we have no trash pickup in town, the transfer station doubles as a weekend social hub since everyone has to go. I kid you not. One purchases a sticker on a yearly basis to gain entrance to the transfer station and throw out bagged trash in the big compactor thingy in the middle, throw out recycling in the appropriate bins, and for the privilege of perusing the “mall,” an area in which to swap usable good (we’ve brought home a working rototiller and a kiln – yes, a kiln – from the mall, dropped off a couch and kitchen good and many, many books). There’s a bottle area to dump returnable bottles and various charitable organizations in town get turns at taking the returns for refunds to benefit their group. It’s an interesting place.

Until recently, although recycling was mandatory, plenty of people just bagged up the recyclable materials and put them in the compactor. The recycling area was confusing, and everything had to be sorted just right else the self-proclaimed “dump Nazis” would lay into you like you would not believe.

There definitely was a system to the transfer station, and one learned it fast or else.

But with the rising costs of hauling away our compacted garbage and issues with the recycling system, our town selectmen, er, selectpersons began investigating other methods. Over the course of a year of research and proposals and visiting other towns, they came up with a two pronged approach: signing a contract with a new recycling organization that would allow single-stream recycling and use of pay-as-you-throw bags for all garbage (with a lowered yearly sticker fee). According to the studies, this would could costs at the transfer station significantly, increase recycling and increase awareness of individual impact on our world. And it was working in towns around us.

No longer would we need to sort our recycling. Just bring it in in one large bin. And the new contract allows recycling of a greater variety of items. We used to have to check plastics numbers, but no more.

The yearly sticker fee dropped by 70%. We would buy blue garbage bags at the local market in one of two sizes ($1 per kitchen bag size, $1.50 per 33-gallon bag size), put all our garbage in there and that was it.

The town also put together some promotions with local garden centers for great composters at lower prices to encourage composting of food and yard waste.

With a fair bit of fuss, the plan was voted into action in December for implementation on April 1.

As is the case in many small towns, there are plenty of people here who don’t like change. Not. At. All. Given some of the uproar and nastiness, you’d think we were asking people to sacrifice their pets or their first born on the altar of Al Gore!

The letters to the editor of the town paper and conversation in the shops were vitriolic to say the least. People declared it a new higher tax, a tax on large families, unresearched, unproven, promoting liberal lies, even un-American. We should be able to use and toss whatever we damn well please, thankyouverymuch. It is our right to consume! Global warming? What global warming? Residents called for the selectmen, er, selectpersons to be recalled

The one point by the dissenters that I’ll even validate here is the tax on large families issue. Yes, it will cost large families more to throw out their garbage. You didn’t think it should cost you the same as the retirees and single grandmothers in town, did you? Should the retired couple be subsidizing your trash habit? You are the ones who chose to have nine kids. It's going to cost more in every way. It just is! So yes, if you look at it from the large family perspective, it can seem “unfair” – or entirely fair and appropriate if you look at it from the little old lady perspective.

Of course, things couldn’t go smoothly to start. In the first couple of weeks, there was revealed to be a manufacturing issue with the first round of bags. They tended to tear if overfilled. The incensed residents declared we should dump the trash from the torn bags on the lawns of the selectmen, er, selectpersons. And in case you didn’t know, here are their addresses.

At any rate, three weeks into pay-as-you-throw, and the furor has mostly died down. There was an interesting race to clean out garages in March before the new stickers and bags went into effect, but for the most part residents are figuring out this whole reduce, reuse, recycle thing – as well as the compost thing. Things seem to be (GASP!) working.

As for my family of five, we were already pretty good at recycling and had been doing some composting, but now we are even better. It is going to cost us less this year to deal with our garbage than it did last year with the full-priced transfer station sticker. It looks like we fill one (ONE!) 33-gallon bag with garbage every two weeks. Everything else is recycled or composted.

Some towns, like mine, seem to need to be dragged into good environment-conscious practices kicking and screaming. Thank goodness there are involved people insistent and persistent enough to do it. I’m sure this isn’t the last such battle in town, but it’s a start. And one has to start somewhere.