2019.08.12 Council Agenda Item 4

This summer, ecomaine launched a program with several municipaliities to hire interns to review recycling containers and grade residents on their recycling and the levels of contamination in their bins. 

Falmouth, Windham, South Portland, and Scarborough partnered with ecomaine and the University of Southern Maine (USM) to implement a summer recycling bin tagging program with student interns. This partnership is a result of recent changes in global recycling markets, and the challenges local municipalities have had to respond to with contaminated recycling streams. Most communities hired two interns, and South Portland hired four. All of the interns gathered on Mondays at USM to discuss their observations during the previous week, and also received a writing prompt as this work related to “social based marketing”.

All residents in the program were notified by mail and provided information about the colored tags that were used during the bin inspection process. In the first half of the program, the two interns tagged in the Stapleford neighborhood (139 households) on Tuesdays and were in the “Flats” (194 households) on Wednesdays. In the second half of the program, the interns tagged in the Town Landing neighborhood (162 households) on Wednesdays and in the Brookside neighborhood (137 households) on Thursdays. Collectively, this program has educated 632 residents on proper recycling. This presentation will be an overview of the program and what the interns learned. 

 A presentation will be posted before the meeting.