By Scott MacKeen
Staff Writer
6/4/09
The Selectmen will likely decide on June 18 whether the town will stick with trash stickers or make a switch to using brightly colored trash bags.
The board spent much of its May 28 meeting debating whether the cost of buying the bags would be worth the possible benefits of the switch. Selectmen were told having the bags rather than stickers could decrease the volume of town waste, increase policing of bag pickups and encourage more recycling.
John Craig, regional manager for WasteZero, said those are the trends he’s seen in Gloucester since that community switched to bags in January.
“We were shocked. In Gloucester, trash has decreased by 26 percent in three months,” said Craig, who represents the company that would manufacture and distribute the bags to Milton retailers if Selectmen decide to make the switch.
He said Gloucester’s recycling rate has also gone up and it has sold more bags than it was selling stickers.
The bags would cost the same $3 that residents currently pay for the trash stickers. The Selectmen were shown one bag that could hold 33 gallons of trash and has a drawstring. WasteZero manufactures brightly colored bags with the town seal to make them easy to identify during waste pickups, Craig said.
Town Administrator Kevin Mearn said part of the problem with stickers is people forget to put them on their bags, or Waste Management workers don’t see the stickers, and the bags don’t get picked up.
“Then the DPW has to do that,” he said.
He said the Department of Public Works also spends around 30 hours each month delivering the trash stickers to retailers and collecting the money. Under the WasteZero plan, the company would deliver the bags directly to stores and collect revenue that it then sends back to the town. That would free up time for DPW employees to do other things, Mearn said.
Selectmen Chair John Shields questioned whether the cost of buying the bags – about double what the town pays to print stickers – would be worth the benefits.
“We’re doubling our costs here with the same revenue. Right there it’s a losing battle,” he said.
The town would pay around 24 cents to buy a bag, compared to the 5 to 10 cents it currently pays to print a trash sticker, according to Assistant Town Engineer John Thompson.
Thompson said he hopes the program would not only cover the increased costs, but “increase town revenue” with the encouragement of additional bag sales over stickers.
To see a growth in bag sales over stickers, one retailer, the Fruit Center, would have to sell more bags than the 50,000 stickers it sold last year, a figure Mearn quoted. The two Tedeschi’s in town were also right around the same mark last year in sticker sales.
If the Selectmen were to adopt the switch to bags, it would not take effect right away. Instead, Mearn explained, there would be 60 days during which residents could still use either stickers or bags, although sticker sales would stop. After that point, those with additional trash stickers could trade them into Town Hall for the bags.
Thompson said he spoke with the managers of most retail outlets that would sell the bags and they were willing to try it.
“Almost all of them were fairly receptive to the switch,” he said.
Retailers would have a choice to sell individual bags or five-packs, Mearn said.
The Selectmen, who will again take up the issue at their June 4 meeting, said they will decide whether to switch to bags June 18.
For more information, call the Selectmen’s office at (617) 898-4846 or contact Mearn at kmearn@townofmilton.org.