City DPW picks up recycling recognition

LYNN – It’s only been three months, but the new trash program has increased recycling so much that the city has been named a finalist for the state’s annual recycling awards. And residents can help vote the city to victory.”Vote for it!” said city Recycling Coordinator Julia Greene. “You can vote often, vote early, vote twice for every day left.”MassRecycle has named Lynn one of three finalists in the municipal category of the board’s annual Recycling Awards.The nomination cited the city’s move in December from an “unlimited” system of trash collection to a two-cart system for collecting trash and recycling along with a fee-based program for bulk items.Citing data from Waste Management, the company contracted to collect the city’s solid waste, the new program has increased the city’s recycling rate from 7 percent to 21 percent. Solid waste collection decreased by 29 percent, while recycling increased by 111 percent, according to the latest data. (The website where you can vote has data from just two months, so it differs.)Public Works Associate Commissioner Lisa Nerich said the financial savings from the program are not yet known. But the city spent $2 million burning trash in 2014. Based on a 7-percent recycling rate, about 80 percent of that trash could have been recycled for free, according to the Public Works Department.While no Massachusetts community has an 80 percent recycling rate, increasing free recycling and thereby reducing solid waste can save money on burning costs.Greene said the 29 percent decrease in solid waste being collected greatly exceeded expectations.She and Nerich attributed the increased recycling to the 96-gallon recycling carts that make recycling easy and can hold large amounts of recyclables. The recycling carts are also bigger than the trash carts, encouraging people to recycle. The public works department also cited a decrease in illegal dumping by people and contractors in surrounding communities with strict trash limits. With unlimited trash pickup, people in other communities would frequently leave bulk items and trash in Lynn rather than pay for it to be disposed in their resident communities, Greene and Nerich said.She and Nerich also noted that this success comes during a very difficult winter.”Trash was very tricky these past five weeks,” Nerich said. She said that weekly snowstorms and the historic height of snowbanks has repeatedly delayed trash pickups. But Greene said the data doesn’t suggest that residents simply aren’t putting out their trash – the rates of recycling and solid waste pickup in February continued the trends of December and January – months with very little snow.As to complaints that the new cart system is a “hindrance” to trash collection while city streets are already narrowed by high snowbanks, Nerich and Greene asked residents to consider what melting snow would reveal if people were leaving plastic bags of trash out. Bags left out overnight on snowbanks would be buried by plows, torn apart by shovels, snow blowers and other machinery during snow removal, and this spring we’d likely find a soggy, smelly springtime mess, they said.Greene and Nerich said there is room for improvement.Education and outreach efforts will continue, and items such as sneakers and clothes can be recycled but not put in the recycling bins, for instance.And Lynners can help their city succeed not just by recycling, but by voting for the city to win the MassRecycle award. Visit the MassRecycle webpage and Facebook page to cast a vote for Lynn to win (and beat other nominees Manchester-by-the-Sea and Salem).Nerich said it was an honor just to be nominated.”We’re excited; it’s great for the city,” Nerich said. “Kudos go to the mayor and City Council for this program. It’s a win-win for this city.”To vote, visit massrecycle.org/r3education/r3conference/recyclingawards/awardsvoting or www.facebook.com/MassRecycle.