SANFORD — From Sept. 16 through Nov. 15, Sanford residents threw away 803 tons of garbage. And if that sounds like a lot, consider this: During the same period in 2012, city residents threw away 1,368 tons of trash, or 41 percent more.
The figures are from Waste Zero, the company that supplies the special trash bags bought by city residents in which to dispose of their household waste. The company in October began sending out monthly reports on how the pay-as-you-throw system is doing.
Pay as you throw, already in place in some surrounding towns like Kennebunk, Wells and North Berwick, made a return to Sanford Sept. 16 after a three-year absence. Voters who cast ballots in the June 11 election decided on that method of disposal rather than an alternative, called More-In-Return, which would have required special bags, but offered users an annual rebate.
It appears to be going well, even though some residents have registered their dismay with paying for trash bags. Not only is the amount of household waste being tossed away down considerably from the same period in 2012, but recycling is also up. It is at 38 percent, as opposed to the 22 percent mark during the same three-month period in 2012, said Waste Zero spokesman Joshua Kolling-Perin, from information supplied by Sanford Public Works Director Charles Andreson.
“The changes have had a meaningful impact on Sanford’s municipal finances,” said Kolling-Perin in a prepared statement. “As a result of the decreased trash volume, Sanford saved $39,871 in solid waste tipping fees during the first three months of the program.”
Andreson, in a late November interview, said the system has a 99.9 percent compliance rate. At that time, the recycling rate had gone from a low of 28.8 percent in the sixth week of the program to a high of 47.8 percent in the seventh week, with varying recycling rates over the first 10 weeks of the program.
With pay as you throw, residents who recycle place less trash at the curb, which city officials said translates into savings on tipping fees ”“ the $70.50 per ton Sanford pays to dispose of garbage ”“ of about $115,000 annually.
The city council had originally intended that revenue from bag sales would be used to tamp down the tax rate. That prospect however, evaporated when the state Legislature cut revenue sharing in the biennial budget earlier this year. Instead of earmarking 3.5 percent of revenue sharing for municipalities, the Legislature approved 2.4 percent, which means Sanford is receiving about $1.26 million, resulting in a budgetary shortfall of $538,000. The new trash system is expected to generate $545,000 over the next 10 months, which will now go to fill that budget gap.
With the pay-as-you-throw program, residents buy trash bags for garbage: $10 buys 10, 8-gallon bags; eight 15-gallon bags or five 33-gallon bags. The city does not charge a fee for residents to dispose of recyclable material, nor does it pay a fee for disposal of recyclables at Ecomaine in Portland.
In 2011, there were about 150 Maine communities that used some sort of pay-as-you-throw model, according to a story in the Maine Townsman in February of that year.
Pay as you throw was first instituted in Sanford in 2010, but was repealed by voters in a referendum three months later.
— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 324-4444 (local call in Sanford) or 282-1535, ext. 327 or twells@journaltribune.com.
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