FORT FAIRFIELD, Maine — The recycle bins will be brimming with milk cartons and newspapers come Earth Day on Tuesday, April 22, and the benefits of that environmentally inspired recycling can manifest itself in an unexpected way — like a decreased tax bill.
“Everyone looks at recycling as the environmental thing to do, and there’s no question that it is,” said Director of the Tri Community Landfill Mark Draper. “But I look at it more as operating this facility from a business perspective.”
“These materials have value, whether it’s steel cans or the plastic or the cardboard or the paper … we can sell them and when we sell them, it generates revenue,” he explained.
That revenue is used to do a couple different things — it helps offset the cost of building and operating the landfill and it allows for improvements at the facility that wouldn’t be affordable otherwise.
“In other words, it’s not just keeping the items out of the landfill, it’s creating revenue that helps us make improvements to the facility without having to increase the tax burden on the communities that are using this (landfill),” Draper summarized.
Like municipalities, businesses and households, Tri Community Landfill has a budget. They have expenses like debt, labor and putting money away for when the landfill eventually closes in 35-50 years. They also have revenues — like those generated through selling recycled materials — which decrease the amount of money the landfill has to charge its participating towns.
The more recycables Tri Community Landfill is able to sell, the more revenue they generate, the less municipalities are charged for using the landfill, the less taxes those municipalities have to charge to pay for waste management services.
There are over 30 communities in Aroostook County served by Tri Community Landfill and while some do have their own recycling centers — like Ashland and Houlton — Tri Community has 20 igloo-style drop-off stations spread through 17 communities.
“In Aroostook county, we’re presented with some challenges from a recycling perspective because of our rural nature,” Draper explained. “Our demographics are basically rural or spread out, so economics or the ability collect materials efficiently becomes more difficult — hence we use the igloo stations.”
In more urban areas like Bangor, Augusta, Waterville or even Presque Isle, curbside collection of recycling is an affordable option.
“In a rural setting, that’s extremely expensive,” Draper said.
Taking into consideration that recycling takes a bit of effort, Draper says that The County does fairly well when it comes to recycling.
According to the state calculated recycling rates, “generally we’re in the 30-35 percent range, which is pretty consistent with the state’s overall rate,” Draper said. “The state’s goal is 50 percent, it has been since 1989, we haven’t been able to achieve that yet but I think we’re doing fairly well.”
Some folks in The County are enthusiastic recyclers … but sometimes that enthusiasm exceeds current recycling capacity. Tri Community Landfill recycles newspaper/magazines/catalogs, corrugated cardboard (in the owning communities of Caribou, Limestone and Fort Fairfield), HTP#2 plastic both colored and clear, and tin cans.
“Those are the only materials that should be going in those igloos,” Draper explained. “I understand there’s a lot of other plastic materials out there, there’s 1-7, .. and we find all of those routinely in the igloo.”
So frequently are good-intended recyclers ready to part with their plastic that Draper estimates only 50 percent of the plastic they collect is actually recyclable.
The rest is sorted out and thrown away.
“I know people get frustrated and think, ‘well it’s plastic, it’s recyclable, we’ll put it in the igloo and then it’ll get recycled,’ but unfortunately, it’s not and here’s why,” Draper explained. “It’s market driven. The only things we can recycle truly are the things that we can sell.”
“I know people are trying to do the right thing, this time of year, we find lots of pellet bags in our igloos. Pellet bags are a #4 plastic, they’re not recyclable in our program,” he added. “We spend a lot of labor time pulling all that plastic out to put it up in the landfill to get to what’s left, which is #2.”
Draper hopes that someday Tri Community will be able to market those other plastics, but doing so is currently cost prohibitive.
Rather than expanding their recycling capabilities, Draper would like to see more people utilizing the current recycling services. A great way to do that, Draper suggests, is by recycling newspapers, magazines and catalogs.
“If you get a newspaper, or you get magazines or catalogs, those are the easiest items to recycle. You don’t have to rinse them, you don’t have to clean them, you don’t have to take labels off of them — just take the newspaper or magazine and put them in the igloo,” Draper described. “Those are materials that are easily marketed for us, and those things are recycled right here in Maine.”
