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Recycling: ‘the little town that could’

By Louise Sullivan, member CE Recycling Committee (02/08/2008)

For years, the Cape Elizabeth Recycling Committee has been chanting, “We think we can, we think we can,” and finally, this past December, our town recycled a record-breaking 30 percent of our hauled trash.

Last month Cape Elizabeth sent 348 tons of trash to ecomaine. Upon arrival, the trucks drove onto big in-ground scales, where they were weighed and the tons of recycling in the silver bullets and cardboard containers was subtracted from the total tonnage. December’s recycled waste jumped a whopping seven percent over the November totals. CE Recycles Chair, Rachel Stamieszkin said, “If we can sustain this level of recycling throughout the year, it will represent a significant reduction of costs to our town for trash disposal. Those revenues can help pay for other town priorities.”

Ecomaine has 21 member towns, including Cape Elizabeth. Even though we smashed our previous town record, 7 of the 21 ecomaine member towns had higher recycling rates than Cape Elizabeth. All but one of those towns have either pay-per-bag, curbside pickup or both. With our new record of 30 percent, we have reached the average of all participating towns. Pownal is the only member town with a voluntary recycling program that surpassed our tonnage at 35 percent of total trash tonnage.

Why the big leap in the percentage of our trash that was recycled last month? Was it so snowy that no one went to the Transfer Station? (Our overall tonnage DID decreased in December). Was it because the students in all three schools are working on recycling systems at school, and that enthusiasm carried over to home? Was it because, with single stream recycling, it’s increasingly easy to implement a recycling system? Was it because the seven silver bullets, strategically placed at the Transfer Station, the Middle School, and behind Town Hall are easy to access?

Whatever the reason, let’s keep the momentum. Our engine in the little town that could is finally beginning to build up a head of steam!