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MINUTES March 24, 1999 2 BOARD OF HEALTH states, the disposal companies are coming up with some ingenious ideas. These are happening more in the western part of the country, but at least they are happening. Everyone has to work together to come up with some sort of program that's going to work. Mr. Macomber added, "The problem is finding the markets for getting rid of the recyclables." Ms. Mayer responded, "DEP is aware of that. They are trying to put some programs together." Mr. Macomber stated, "The question right now is, what do we do with it?' On the West Coast they were making better money from the product because they could sell it to foreign countries easier than we can on this coast." Ms. Mayer added, "And we all know what happened recently with the foreign markets, don't we? We're paying now to get rid of the tin cans and we used to get money for that stuff and the white goods and everything else. It's going to have to turn around and I think it's going to happen." Mr. Macomber stated, "When it makes and turnaround and there's a market then there's money for everyone to make. But, right now I'm just glad to be able to bring my few recyclables to the town landfill." Mr. Cram added, "The ultimate dream of this is to make money on the recyclables, but if we can even break even, the net effect is that it's reducing our tonnage that's going to Otis and eventually on to SEMASS. This tends to help reduce our costs. This is one of the other sides of this we have to look at too." Mr. Macomber stated, "Right, but I'm doing less than breaking even right now. It's all just customer relations right now." Ms. Mayer stated, "Bourne is proposing to open up a big recycling facility." Mr. McQuaid added, "They are proposing to establish a recycling transfer station at Otis, adjacent to the Otis transfer station and using the rail, where possible, to market the recyclables. The Otis Board of Managers is fully behind it as far as giving Bourne the permission to do that. Our Board would seriously look at allowing the smaller haulers who have residential accounts use of our transfer station for your recyclables." Ms. Mayer introduced Vicky Davis, administrator of the Municipal Recycling Incentive Program, who stated, "The grant program requires that towns that participate in the grant program pass the regulation that's being discussed tonight. The State does a lot of funding for recycling projects in the state from a fund called CEF which is from the Bottle Bill when people don't turn in their bottles. The State gets that money. There was talk today at a meeting I attended that they are hoping to get about $15 million. A portion of that would go toward loans or grants to local businesses that buy recyclables. Hopefully that would help the situation for your markets. I realize that it's difficult when you have an international economy. Under