HOULTON, Maine — The first meeting of the Houlton Recycle Committee was held Jan. 21, at the Varney Agency conference room. Attending were Cathy Davis, Annie Torres, Allison Gooding, Susan Young, Sarah Smith, David Smith and Erica Rockwell.
There has been a great deal of interest from the general public and this first meeting was attended by folks who have a good deal of knowledge about the recycle effort. Susan Young, natural resources director for the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, advised that HBMI did a survey a number of years ago on this exact issue, with efforts toward grant writing to financially support recycling efforts. The results of this survey were that more people would recycle if it was more convenient; more hours were available to drop off items; and if there was an ability to recycle more plastics, Nos. 1-7 instead of just No. 2.
The committee studied a Bangor Daily News article from last spring about the zero-sort recycling programs in 50 Maine communities and committee members will be reaching out to those communities to determine the cost, the obstacles they encountered when putting together a program, how successful it has been, and bring that information back to the next meeting.
“This is a grass roots effort with the intention being to build a team, motivated and environmentally minded, to search out the right people to help with issues such as the best kind of equipment to use moving forward, how to build and negotiate a budget and contract,” Davis said. “The core of this team has been formed, but we are looking for more community members with specific skills and knowledge to join this effort. Once we have a clear objective, we then need to create a plan, do we want to include businesses and apartments in the program or just private residences, do we want to have a pick up program or just a drop off center, can we offset some costs by partnering with a neighboring community.”
Deciding which materials to recycle may seem easy, but there needs to be a clear goal as to where to start and what items may not currently have a market and might need to be set up for future study once the recycle program is fully operational, Davis added.
“One of the biggest goals of the committee will be public education,” she said. “It should be relatively easy to put a program in place. There is no question there is a need, and there is no question there is a solution, the challenge is how to pay for it and how to get people to use it. If you pay $30 a month for someone to come haul your trash whether it’s one bag or 30, where is your incentive to reduce your waste stream?
“This committee will have a huge focus on finding educational materials for the schools and getting information into the hands of the public. There will be a core group of people who already recycle and our goal would be to reach out to those first and show them the direction we feel makes the most sense for Houlton, get them on board and get the program off to a positive start. Then we will begin to focus the message on the people who may not currently believe recycling is important, emphasizing the economic benefits.”
Recycling, proponents say, is more than a “feel good tree hugging movement” it is a growing industry with positive results for the economy. The next meeting will be Wednesday at 6 p.m. at 76 North Street (Varney Agency conference room).
