Revere mayor wants recycling program expanded citywide

REVERE – Mayor Thomas Ambrosino wants the RecycleBank curbside collection program offered across the city with its anticipated savings offsetting an estimated $400,000 expansion cost.”The RecycleBank pilot program has proved very successful and popular with residents. It has proven to be, in many respects, a pain free way to substantially increase the city’s pathetic recycling,” Ambrosino wrote in a letter urging City Council members to expand the program.RecycleBank provides residents with large bins and rewards them with gift certificates and other discount offerings for a variety of different purchases if they fill the bins with cans, bottle and recyclable paper.Every ton the city saves through recycling reduces city trash disposal costs by $71.”Residents have responded positively to the program, due both to the rewards and to the fact that there is no need to separate materials,” Ambrosino said.To expand collections across the city, RecycleBank must distribute 18,000 bins at a cost to the firm of $123,000. City officials calculated the city needs to divert 13 tons a day in recyclable material from the daily trash collection in order to cover the cost of the bins through recycling savings.Ambrosino estimates the savings will be easily achievable because the Friday pilot program operated by Recyclable collected 11 tons a day.The city also incurs an added cost with trash collector Capitol Waste by expanding recycling. Capitol must add another collection truck and crew to its routes to handle recycling for a cost, Ambrosino said, of $270,000 a year.The mayor proposed extending Capitol’s contract by five years through 2015 in return for Capitol waiving the added cost in the first year of the expanded program.”I do think that, over time, the increase in recycling will be sufficient enough to cover not just the annual lease cost of the recycling bins, but also some portion of Capitol Waste’s increase,” Ambrosino told councilors.