Saugus to open drop-off center for tech recyclables

SAUGUS – The town is looking to make recycling tough-to-get-rid-of items like computers and televisions even easier when it opens a drop-off center at the Department of Public Works next month.Recycling Coordinator Lorna Cerbone said her target date to open the center is Sept. 21 but she is first waiting for two roll-off Dumpsters to arrive. The plan is to locate two Dumpsters behind the Main Street DPW building – one for regular recycling such as cans, bottles and paper and another strictly for computers and televisions.”We’ll take small house fax machines or printers too,” Cerbone said. “No commercial machines though, just household.”The center will officially be open Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon, but for DPW Superintendent Joseph Attubato it will offer some 24-hour relief.Attubato fields dozens of calls a week to pick up items others have dumped along the side of the road. Behind his building are various stacks of computers, appliances, tires and other debris left by illegal dumpers. With the Dumpsters on hand Attubato said it at least gives him someplace to put some of the debris he picks up.”We got two calls last week about TVs,” Attubato said. “It takes a lot of guts to (dump) something like that. Someone could be watching. I don’t understand it.”Attubato said he is also hoping that by making the Dumpsters available to all residents, it might stem the tide of illegal dumping, at least a little.Cerbone is trying to give residents another incentive to haul their recyclables to the DPW on Saturdays – it’s free, for now anyway. Typically residents only had two days per year in which to drop off items like computers and TVs and it cost them $10. Cerbone said she will treat the initial opening as a pilot program and allow residents to leave their junk for free. She admits, however, that that amenity might not last. In a survey of 38 surrounding towns, only one, Middleton, has a free drop off recycling center.”We’ll try it for a few months while we work the kinks out and see how it goes,” she said. “Hopefully this will be a good outlet for residents and it won’t be abused.”Cerbone said she will be tracking where the TVs and computers left behind at the DPW are coming from. So if one particular resident shows up week after week with five TVs or a half dozen computer monitors, she will investigate.”People keep asking if there will be a limit or if there will be a cost,” Cerbone said. “We would like to say no and not charge, but don’t abuse it.”When he first heard about the prospect of Dumpsters in his backyard, Attubato admits he was not happy. Now, however, he thinks better of it.”We’ll make a go of it,” he said. “Hopefully this will work to satisfy people and pull some of the illegal dumping out of the mainstream.”