4/14/2015 WASTE MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE Minutes

Home Browse Search

out of the trash", and that's what typically motivates people. Just being good green people is not quite enough motivation for most people and that's why we are seeing people moving in different ways. Tom O'Hara: I've been thinking about that. I don't think it's only money. I think when I talk to people they are concerned about the environment and everybody is trying to do their fair share recycling, some of them not as good as others. But I think when you offer them another opportunity for them to take care of the environment I think they'll take care of it. Not every pork bone is going to go in there. But I think that within a year we will see a great reduction in the weight of the solid trash. John Cahalane: I'm very happy because of the start. Tom O'Hara: I give Catherine a lot of credit for jumping on this and moving forward to make it happen. The numbers continue to go down and the solid waste continues to go down. I think we are making all the steps in the right direction to make this a solid waste committee, where we can reduce our solid waste and I applaud you for that, I truly do. Mike: So we need to do more. Obviously this is another one of those education things where we have to explain. And the signage, again simply we are talking about what we say and what we hear and it is true that I don't know how critical you can be sometimes but it does get a little confusing because it does say disposal, it doesn't say trash, and I can understand how that can be a little confusing. Tom O'Hara: Well, on that note, maybe we can somehow put it to the people that, you know what, it's misleading but it is the law. A lot of stuff comes in in black bags and you never know what's going in there. That's the reality. No one is sitting there throwing cans and bottles in there it's just not happening. It's hard to regulate that unfortunately. Mike: From an organics program, we're starting a program that is increasingly conservative in terms of cost. The facility you'll have, use your own container and we have to do more education on that. John Cahalane: Education I think, is huge. The more we do the more chance we have to have people doing it. Mike: And our education should be just natural, explaining the signage. Catherine: $150 per month. Tom O'Hara: That's two tons of organic waste which, when I thought about it, that's a lot of organic waste to come up with on a weekly basis, but on a monthly basis, that's going to be about a break even. $72 a ton to get rid of it, it's probably a break even. It could be a loss. John Cahalane: It's a start. It can only get better. Mike: Would you want to get into textiles. Catherine: Yes. I think the other offer, textile recycling, has been the Goodwill, the Salvation Army, Red Cross bin, all our textile recycling. We are going to try to do a better job of promoting those. We did a series of ads a year ago to try to reinforce the point that when recycling textiles it doesn't have to be wearable items of clothing. It can be anything. If it's not separated out to go to Goodwill it can be made in to rags. Mike: Most people think that you have to throw something in that's reasonably good. We can go the other way and take all of our textiles and throw them into bins for purpose of those recycling textiles. Catherine: These companies will take all of it. If they cannot pull out a sweater to sell in their shop they will bundle it and they will sell it as rags. So everything that is going in there is for re- use somewhere, whether it is to raise money for that particular location. Tom O'Hara: Nobody knows this. It's another sign. 16 Great Neck Road North • Mashpee,MA • 02649 5 phone:508.539.9400 • fax:508.539.0954 • email:mis@ci.mashpee.ma.us mAmy documentslWaste Mgmt Verbatim.doc