LEWISTON – The city is testing the market for recyclable glass through October with special bins at the Solid Waste Facility.

A special bin for mixed recyclables – glass bottles and jars, most kinds of plastic and hard-bound books – has been set up at the landfill. Those items are shipped to a single-stream recycling facility in Auburn, Mass., where they are sorted and sold.

“We need to know if this is a process that is stable and viable, economically, for us to pursue,” Public Works Director Paul Boudreau said.

All of the city’s recyclable materials are sold on the open market, but Boudreau said the way glass is collected can cause problems. The glass market is strongest for clear bottles.

“That’s the main thing we wanted to collect, but we’d get people leaving other kinds of glass in our bins,” Boudreau said. “Anytime a colored bottle or a piece of Pyrex or a glass fish tank gets thrown in, it contaminates the entire load and what was supposed to be a revenue becomes an expense.”

Curbside recycling is not included in the test. People can still leave paper, cans, No. 2 plastic and clear glass curbside. Those items are sorted into bins on the trucks by city employees.

“We don’t want people to think that we’re collecting single-stream recycling curbside, because we’re just not prepared to do that,” Boudreau said. “If they put other kinds of plastic or colored glass in their curbside bins, it simply will not be picked up. That hasn’t changed.”