September 8, 2010
Wellesley
Natick man pushing for more outdoor recycling in Wellesley
By Teddy Applebaum
One man’s trash is another man’s recycling — at least for Natick resident Pat Conaway.
“Every time I’d go to an outdoor activity in Natick, there was a trash barrel and no recycling barrel,” he said. “It kind of drove me crazy, so I decided to do something about it.”
Sick of watching spectators toss plastic bottles into the trash, Conaway began lobbying Natick officials a few years ago to place more recycling bins in public areas. The town liked the idea and purchased 15 bins.
“They really became popular,” said Tom Hladick of Natick’s Department of Public Works. “It’s good because the trash was getting really out of hand with the bottles and all.”
The program was so successful that it’s been expanded to more than 40 barrels, and the town is thinking of purchasing more. Buoyed by his Natick success, Conaway — who also distributes and empties homemade receptacles called “Buddy Bins” — is broadening his efforts to surrounding towns, including Wellesley.
“I’m trying to nudge a bunch of the neighboring communities in the direction of better outdoor recycling,” he said. “What I’m trying to do is get towns to place a recycle bin next to the outdoor trash bins.”
But that might prove difficult in Wellesley. While some town officials said they’d like to see more recycling bins, they stressed that it’s a question of resources.
“I’d like to do more absolutely, but doing more also means more funding,” said Gordon Martin, Wellesley’s Recycling and Disposal Facility superintendent. “We’re already doing more with less.”
Neal Seaborn, chairman of the town’s Natural Resources Committee, was adamant in his opposition to more bins.
“Those are trash magnets is what they are,” he said. “From a parkland and conservation point of view, it would really increase the DPW labor and effort.”
Not that the town doesn’t have an interest in expanded recycling, Martin said. He pointed out that the town already has an employee who spends his entire day emptying the town’s 80 trash and 40 recycling bins from a number of public spaces and municipal building such as schools and the police station.
And that’s not all. The RDF is in its third year of its “Business Initiative” a program where they go to some local businesses, such as supermarkets, and pick up their recycling. In 2010, the program recycled more than 1,500 tons and provided the town with more than $84,000 in pure profit.
Yet for all that Wellesley does, more remains to be done, Conaway said. While the RDF has placed recycling bins in some high-use areas, such as playing fields, most of the public trash barrels in town lack recycling counterparts.
“Wellesley is a pretty progressive community when it comes to the environment,” Conaway said. “I think [residents] would be surprised how much stuff would get into those recycle bins [if they were there].”
Though the town’s public trash bins aren’t overflowing with such bottles, Martin said, a general lack of public recycling bins means that more plastic is making it into the wastestream than he would like to see.
Conaway suspects it could be even more than Martin admitted. Based on his personal observations in Wayland and Natick, he said, about half the volume of an average public trash bin lacking a nearby recycling bin could have been recycled.
“Wellesley is maybe a little more carry-in, carry-out conscious,” he said. “But my guess would be they can’t be that different than Wayland and Natick.”
Because big steps such as adding more bins and the employees to service them may cost too much, Martin advocates for a less direct solution. He’d hoped that a broader bottle bill, which would have expanded the deposit program to water bottle and other such items, would have provided added incentive for people to recycle instead of tossing their bottles. That bill died in committee earlier this year.
Ultimately what with Wellesley’s professed focus on sustainability (Town Meeting members voted to support a goal that would reduce town energy use by 10 percent, and many schools teach about recycling), Conaway sees a bit of a contradiction in the town’s relative lack of bins.
“I’m very impressed with a lot of the things Wellesley does,” he said. “It seems like Wellesley would be capable of taking that step.”
http://www.wickedlocal.com/wellesley/news/x128168091/Natick-man-pushing-for-more-outdoor-recycling-in-Wellesley
