Category Archives: Recycling & Solid Waste

New stickers are needed for transfer station access by July 1 – get the application here.  $50 for the first car and $25 for any others for two years.

If you use Waste Management for trash, I  recently learned that they  provides free wheeled barrels for recycling, which they will deliver to your home.  I got mine this week, and recommend it to all as being much easier to use to get things back and forth to the curb.  No more of the crashes I have experienced more than once by stacking the recycling tubs on top of the waste barrel to make it all in one trip.  Additionally, they are huge.  Call them at 800-972-4545 to get one.

Yesterday I visited the Sherborn swap to see how they operated.  They have a series of small buildings, which allow them to operate year round. The largest is a metal building, perhaps 20′ X 30′, which housed furniture, board games, myriads of items, that seemed well organized.  I especially liked the foosball table.  There were at least two other wooden sheds, one housing sporting goods, and the other from a glance seemed to be skis.

I met two of the three volunteers who were manning the swap.  Carol Rosenberg of the Recycling Committee and I discussed the differences of our two systems, and possible opportunities for synergies from coordinating services.  She asked if Medfield might even consider taking Sherborn’s trash and whether Medfield residents might be interested in dropping things off at the Sherborn swap.  Sherborn currently lets anyone take away swap items, but only Sherborn residents are allowed to leave items.  I retorted that we should always be willing to discuss opportunities to work together, and so she took one of the selectmen business cards I paid to get printed up to assist with such communication, saying that she would be talking to the chair of their Board of Selectmen this week, and would let me know.

Mike Sullivan’s email to the Solid Waste Committee last week reported that recycling was up.  He attached a detailed spreadsheet.

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The updated recycling information, including April tonnange and May credit is attached. Looks like recycling rate has jumped to 26% to 27% recently from around 22% to 23%. Hope the trend continues.  Mike

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DEP tells me that the only real way to maximize recycling is to implement pay as you throw (PAYT).  The DEP website on PAYT  (http://www.mass.gov/dep/recycle/reduce/paytfact.htm)  lists Wrentham as being over 30% recycling rates on PAYT, Duxbury looks to have cut its solid waste budget by more than 50% by using PAYT (saving a couple hundred thousand dollars a year), and Needham trash dropped 50% when it went with PAYT.  We have implemented single stream and seen an uptick in recycling, but Duxbury too implemented single stream, and its graph showed modest effects from single stream, but a dramatic drop when PAYT was started.

I think the lessons are clear, that if we want to save the town the most money and to recycle the most, we really need to start PAYT.  The problem is that no one really likes PAYT, but even if we do not like PAYT we should really like the results we can get from using it, both is saving money and in doing our part to save the planet.

It was reported at last night’s Board of Selectmen meeting that Ken Feeney wants to have the Transfer Station open daily for both this week and next.   It was clear from the context that it will be open every day this week, but it also seemed that it will be open daily next week too – however, best to check on next week before you count on it.