AUBURN – Richard Whiting used to take home some of the things thrown out at the Esplanade and slip them into his recycling bins.

“For things like coffee cans, I just couldn’t stand not recycling them,” said Whiting, director of the Auburn Housing Authority.

Since the authority’s properties are largely multiple-unit buildings, they don’t receive city garbage and recycling collections. The authority contracts with trash hauler Waste Management to collect tenants’ trash.

Recycling was too expensive, Whiting said and it wasn’t an option until now. The authority officially offered recycling to its tenants on Friday. It struck a deal through Waste Management to deliver recyclables to EcoMaine, the Portland-based waste system, free of charge.

Tenants don’t have to sort what they recycle. Everything – plastic milk jugs, newspapers, cardboard boxes and tin cans – goes into a single bin. Waste Management collects it and ships it to EcoMaine.

Whiting hopes the switch will cut the authority’s trash-hauling bills. It pays $2,278 per month to collect trash at the authority’s five properties and haul it to the Mid-Maine Waste Action Corp. incinerator. The properties include the Esplanade, Barker Mill Arms, Lake Auburn Town Homes, Auburn Family Development and Broadview Acres, and altogether house 400 units.

Trash-hauling fees are based on a set amount of waste, Whiting said. “If that amount increases, the price goes up accordingly.”

The more tenants recycle, the more trash will be diverted to EcoMaine.

Alison McCrady, recycling coordinator for EcoMaine, spent the day introducing the program to tenants at Auburn Housing Authority’s properties.

“The main thing we’re trying to get them to understand is that they don’t have to sort any longer,” she said. “They don’t have to tie up their newspapers with a piece of string or peel labels off of tins cans.”

EcoMaine opened its single-stream recycling plant in Portland in May 2007. It’s home to an automated sorting machine that culls the recyclables and bundles them for sale. First, it pulls out cardboard, then newspaper, office paper and tin cans. Rollers crush the remaining trash to pull out glass bottles, an electromagnetic field pulls out aluminum cans and an optical sensor pulls out common plastic items. The rest is sorted by hand.

EcoMaine is owned by 21 Maine municipalities and offers recycling to 31 communities across the state. It’s the only facility of its kind in Maine.