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The University of Maine recycling depot’s full-time staff may be at risk of layoffs if the campus is converted to a new recycling system.
Facilities Management positions could potentially be eliminated if the campus switched to single-stream recycling, according to Gregory Edwards, president The Green Team, who is proposing the new system. The system will be tested in residence and dining facilities in Hilltop and Steward quads starting in March.
“If this goes well, which it probably will, they can slowly switch all the dining halls and dorms,” Edwards said.
Under current system, paper, plastic, cardboard, deposit bottles, glass and No. 2 plastics are sorted into different bins, then collected by custodial staff and sorted into plastic bags. These bags cost UMaine $3,200 last year, according to Edwards. Single-stream recycling would eliminate the need for the plastic bags, among other costs by allowing all recyclable material to be placed in one bin.
“We need to prove our worth financially,” said Michael Maberry, a fourth-year history student and coordinator of Green Campus Initiative, and proponent of single-stream. “It saves a lot of money, but takes away jobs on campus that regularly do this type of recycling. That may cause some backlash, but it’s just hard to disagree with the amount of money that’s being saved.”
There is a 70 percent cost savings by making the switch, Edwards said. He will give a presentation to the General Student Senate on Tuesday to try to get a resolution in favor of single-stream. Edwards says the new system would cost $85 per ton of materials, as opposed to $300 per ton under the current system.
Dennis Grant, assistant supervisor of sustainability for facilities management, is skeptical of the benefits of single-stream.
“No one has really dug deep enough to see the consequences,” Grant said. “We don’t know where they’re getting their figures, and if they’ve even gone through the financial departments. Or if it did come into effect, what would happen with full time staff members or anything, so it’s too early to tell,” Grant said.
Gordon Nelson, coordinator at Property Management was unavailable for comment. Edmunds said Single-stream had been discussed in the past but was not feasible due to Maine’s lack of compactors necessary to sort recycling once it leaves campus. Edwards worked closely with Nelson and Property Management, which have begun working on the pilot program.
“We’re in Northeastern Maine where there’s a low population and not a lot of money, so we had to wait awhile for this to happen,” Edwards said.
The depot handles all recyclable materials at UMaine. Its staff does a negative sort, which involves taking out contaminated material, then bailing it. Recyclables are then sent to a Maine Resource Recovery Association warehouse, where it is sorted and eventually sold.
These machines are expensive, and there are not many are in the area. UMaine’s recyclables will be sent to the nearest compactors, which are in Southern Maine and Massachusetts. The university currently contracts with Casella Waste Systems, which runs the Hamden land fill, where campus trash goes.
The existing recycling process is labor-intensive, according to Edwards. After waste is collected and put in clear plastic bags, trucks from Facilities Management pick them up and take them to the UMaine recycling depot, located by the University Credit Union.
Single-stream recycling “cuts out little steps along the way that cost money,” Edwards said. “It uses less money, energy and manpower.”
“We save enough money, where it will pay for itself to install the compactor needed for it in less than a year,” Maberry said.
“If FM was completely on board, they’d be doing their own trial run for academic and administrative buildings, but right now there isn’t one,” Edwards said.
The city of Portland and schools such as the University of Southern Maine, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have already switched to single-stream recycling. Holden, Mass., switched to single-stream and experienced an increase in recycling rate from 13 to 27 percent.
