To improve their recycling rate and decrease associated costs, USM’s recycling program will change over to “single stream” recycling, eliminating almost all sorting of recyclables.
Students will also be seeing new recyclable containers around campus. These containers will be better labeled and all plastic containers will be put together. All recyclable paper, paperboard, plastics 1-7 (except #6 Styrofoam) and metal food containers can be put into the recycling containers.
Last Monday, at the beginning of Earth Week, the university’s new contract with ecomaine – a local non-profit waste management company – began. With the new contract in place, recyclables will be put in one bin and then sorted out at ecomaine’s recycling facility.
“We’ve waited a year and a half to do this,” said Brett Hallett, recycling coordinator for Facilities Management. According to Hallett, USM previously had a contract with Corcoran Environmental Services, a Kennebunk based recycling and waste management company. Corcoran would pick up the university’s sorted paper and cardboard and take it to ecomaine’s facility.
“Before the market crashed Corcoran was buying the paper material. Then the market crashed and Corcoran ran into financial issues early last year. They began charging for the recycling of our material,” said Hallett.
After USM’s contract with Corcoran expired in June, recycling management at USM decided to make recycling more efficient and less costly. “When we were looking at our options, single stream recycling made the most sense,” said Hallett.
The new contract with ecomaine not only erases the middleman, but adds to what the university can recycle. USM joined a profit share contract managed by ecomaine, along with other municipalities ecomaine works with. “Though the costs to the university will be the same, possible benefits will be much greater,” said Hallett. “We are seeing money from our recyclables. The more the market rises, the closer to breaking even or seeing a profit we get.”
It costs USM $88 more a ton to dispose of trash as opposed to recycled material. If all the trash USM disposed of was recycled instead last, they would have saved about $40,000.
USM produces more than 1.5 million pounds of solid waste every year. Last year, 46 percent of that waste was recycled or composted, and almost 50 percent went to a waste-to-energy plant. USM is hopes to exceed Maine’s state mandate of recycling or composting 50 percent of all municipal solid waste.
Hallet said they have already put the new covers on all recycling containers on the Portland campus and are “working diligently” to finish in Gorham next.