AUBURN — The city should begin looking for new ways to handle curbside recycling this spring.

Public Works Director Bob Belz said he expects to begin taking bids from companies to collect recycling in the next month or so. How those bids come in could determine how much sorting residents will have to do before dropping off their recycling.

“This bid is being fashioned to explore all of our options concerning recycling,” Belz said.

The three main options are to continue the current program of sorting the recyclables as they are loaded onto the truck, switching to single-sort or switching to a dual-sort program.

In a single-sort program, residents would put all recyclable materials in a single container. A dual-sort program would have residents separate fibrous materials such as paper and cardboard from plastics, glass and metal before leaving recyclables curbside.

“One thing we do understand is that generally, the less sorting you ask people to do, the more participation you get and the more material you receive,” Belz said.

He said some changes are inevitable. For years, Auburn sent its recycling to Lewiston to have it baled, stored and sold. But Lewiston city councilors voted in January to switch to single-sort collections, closing down the city’s sorting facility at the Lewiston Solid Waste facility. 

“That did two things, gave us a place to send our recycling and provided a revenue stream,” Belz said. “That’s going away, so we need to find a way to balance some new efficiencies with that lost revenue and find the best interest of the city.”

Belz said the city’s new twice-monthly collection schedule would not change with the new contract. It’s already been built into the department’s proposed 2011-12 budget.

The new contract would begin in July 2011, Belz said. He’s also negotiating a new deal for trash collections with Almighty Waste. The company bid $354,220 for each year of a five-year contract, the lowest price among four companies. That contract would begin in July, as well.

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