Greene helps Lynn go green

LYNN – The conversation Thursday began with sobering statistics.Ninety-six percent of our trash is capable of being recycled in some way. But Lynners recycle only 7 percent.”It’s almost the exact opposite of what can be recycled,” said Julia Greene.But Greene, a Lynn resident, is hoping to change that, after starting last month as the city’s new recycling coordinator.”We have a long way to go and change is difficult, of course,” Greene said. “But I want to work in Lynn and work on improving the city I live in.”Greene (yes, she also finds her name appropriate) is paid from a two-year grant from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection to increase recycling and reduce municipal solid waste in Lynn.The position arose out of Greene’s own community efforts. A native Lynner who now owns her childhood home by Goldfish Pond, Greene had most recently worked with former Cambridge Mayor Henrietta Davis to ensure the administration met its environmental and sustainability goals.Following Davis’ term, Greene was inspired to found her own nonprofit to work on improving sustainability in Lynn. She was speaking about sustainability issues with Department of Public Works Associate Commissioner Lisa Nerich early this spring and found out there was a grant available for municipal waste-reduction.Meanwhile, the city was finalizing a new solid-waste contract and looking for ways to reduce the money spent on trash disposal – which resulted in the new trash regulations that began this month.”It was great timing with the awarding of the grant and hiring of Greene,” Nerich said. “There are lots of questions. The phones are ringing off the hook.”The new trash regulations are the most dramatic effort to increase recycling. The recycling barrel is, by design, larger than the trash container to encourage residents to separate their recyclables from the trash.But it is a new process.So Greene is going around the city, answering questions, taking photographs of clean streets and streets not adhering to the regulations, and she admitted she has donned plastic gloves to help neighbors remove bottles and cans from their trash.(And to clarify, Greene noted the bin system can only recycle 80 percent of the 96 percent of materials that can possibly be recycled. The 96-percent figure includes composting food waste, for instance, and plastic bags cannot be recycled because the machines that separate the city’s recyclables can get jammed on plastic bags.)Greene also has plans for other activities.Teaching schoolchildren about recycling will be a major part of her efforts. She said she hopes to organize a Reuse Festival, featuring artists and craftsmen who use recycled materials and companies who will collect specific materials for disposal. She envisions paper-shredding days (after Tax Day) and has started a Facebook page for Recycling Works in Lynn and a blog “Trash Talks in Lynn.”Her goal is to see the city increase from a 7-percent to 25-percent recycling rate.”If we can’t convince you it’s important for the environment, because it is, it’s a real pocketbook issue for taxpayers because all of the fees have gone up for landfills and for the incinerator,” Greene said.She explained that the city has to pay to collect its trash and then pay “tipping fees” to dispose of its waste. But she noted that you can dispose of recycling for free – companies make money packaging and then reselling it for other uses.She acknowledged, however, that she has a lot of work to do.”This is a change and we’re all going to have to learn the change,” Green said. “So we’re trying to take it from every angle to make sure people get the message that it’s very important.”