From left: Waldoboro Public Works Director John Daigle, employee Bruce Rolfe, and Assistant Public Works Director Will Pratt at the gate house of the Waldoboro Transfer Station. Daigle and Pratt are advocating that the town adopt pay-as-you-go recycling to reduce the cost of operating the station, which has a 2024 budget of over $1 million. (Molly Rains photo)
Citing costs incurred by the shrinking popularity of recycling and the ever-growing volume of trash passing through the Waldoboro Transfer Station, Public Works Director John Daigle is proposing – for the third time in the course of his more than four-decade career – that the town switch to a pay-as-you-throw model for waste disposal. This time, he said, he sees no other way to ensure a viable future for the transfer station.
“I’m all out of ideas. This is it. We’ve tried everything,” Daigle said, standing outside the station’s gate house on the morning of Tuesday, Feb. 27.
The Waldoboro Transfer Station serves about 8,000 residents from the towns of Waldoboro, Friendship, and Cushing, taking in about 3,500 tons of trash and recycling each year, Daigle said. Of that total, about 85% – or nearly 3,000 tons – is garbage, which the town of Waldoboro must pay to transport to a landfill.
Under a pay-as-you go model, residents would purchase special trash bags in order to throw away nonrecyclable trash. Revenue from bag sales would then be used to support the station’s operation, reducing the station’s reliance on tax dollars, Daigle said.
Daigle suggested that the switch in operating models would reduce the overall costs associated with operating the transfer station by as much as 50%, simply because charging for the disposal of trash would provide a financial incentive for residents to recycle more materials.
A shift in the recycling-to-garbage ratio is financially favorable, Daigle said, because transporting and dumping garbage carries a significant cost, lately between about $114 and $124 per ton. That total includes both the cost of transportation to the landfill ($20 to $30 per ton) and the fee required to deposit the garbage (currently about $94).
Tipping fees are likely to increase in the future, as “places are running out of space,” said Will Pratt, assistant director of Waldoboro Public Works and select board member.
Recycling, on the other hand, is a more cost-effective and sustainable option, Daigle said. Through a partnership with the county, haulers from Lincoln County Recycling collect more than 10 different kinds of recyclable products – from plastics to tin cans, cardboard, and batteries – without charging the town, he said.
In Waldoboro, where the current ratio of recycling to garbage is 15/85, much of what residents discard in the trash could be recycled or composted if residents took the time to sort the items into the transfer station’s various bins, Daigle said. Indiscriminately throwing everything away, he added, inadvertently contributes to the high costs associated with operating the station.
The extreme difference between the cost of processing garbage versus recycling means that the current rate at which residents are – or, more accurately, aren’t – recycling is a significant contributor to the overall transfer station budget, Pratt said.
Town Manager Julie Keizer confirmed the 2024 transfer station budget has passed the $1 million mark. According to Pratt, this could be a sign of things to come if the fee model does not change.
“We’re to the point where, you can bank on this, (costs) are going to keep increasing,” he said. “It hurts everybody, all the taxpayers. That’s not very fair.” Recycling, he continued, is “a personal responsibility.”
“I remember when this was a $50,000 operation,” said Daigle, echoing a point that he also shared with the Waldoboro Select Board at its meeting on Feb. 13.
At that meeting, Waldoboro Select Board member Bob Butler told the board that the Waldoboro Transfer Station Committee, of which he is also a member, was seeking guidance about whether the select board would support an initiative to implement pay-as-you-throw.
A previous attempt to do the same about eight years ago failed, Butler said, adding that he believed support from town officials would be essential if this initiative is to move forward.
On Feb. 27, Daigle noted that he had been a part of that previous initiative, and another before it which also failed. However, he said, times have changed. According to Daigle, the transfer station’s situation is more dire, and more financially precarious, than ever.
Though as much as 36% of the garbage processed by the facility was recyclables before the 2020 lockdown, the wave of garbage that accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic skewed the ratio, Daigle said. The volume of garbage being thrown away has not diminished since then, he added, and the ratio of recycling to trash has not recovered, either.
“It’s a throwaway society. Some people don’t care to recycle when it’s just so easy to throw the trash away,” Daigle said.
Both Daigle and Pratt noted an age disparity between the residents who choose to recycle and those who do so less often.
“We could have pouring rain, a wicked storm, and the older people who come in, they’ll recycle,” Daigle said. “A lot of the younger generation (is) not recycling.”
Pratt said he hoped that tying a financial incentive to recycling through pay-as-you-throw would be enough to get more residents sorting their trash.
If implementing the model successfully promotes recycling to the same degree that it has in other municipalities in Maine, he said, “preliminary numbers” indicated that the transfer station would save about $500,000 yearly – about 50% of its proposed 2024 budget.
Other communities in Maine have seen their recycling-to-garbage ratio rise as high as 50/50 following a switch to pay-as-you-throw, Daigle said, citing the city of Waterville as an example.
Overall, Daigle hopes that residents would agree with his view that a pay-as-you-throw model would be a more fair way of financing the transfer station.
This applies to residents who do not utilize the station but still, under the current model, support it with their tax dollars, Daigle said. It would also account for the summer residents of Cushing and Friendship, some of whom also use the station but are not counted in the per-capita rate that Waldoboro charges those towns, Pratt said.
“This would make it fair. If you want to recycle, great. If you don’t, it’s your choice, but you’re going to pay,” said Daigle.
Whether Waldoboro makes the switch to pay-as-you-go will be determined by voters, possibly through a question on the November ballot, said Pratt.
Residents are welcome to attend meetings of the Waldoboro Transfer Station Committee to learn more about the transfer station and proposed changes, he added. For more information, call 832-5369 or go to waldoboromaine.org.
