LEWISTON — Area towns should be allowed to bring their unsorted recyclables to Lewiston’s landfill, councilors said Tuesday.

Councilors agreed to let City Administrator Ed Barrett negotiate with towns to use the River Road landfill to store their recyclable materials.

“We know that Greene and Leeds and some other towns are interested in finding a place to bring that stuff,” Public Works Director David Jones said. “This gives us the room to work something out.”

Councilors agreed, voting 7-0 to let Barrett work with area towns. Lewiston’s single-stream recycling program is scheduled to begin during the first week of July.

Residents will no longer have to sort their recyclables and the city will accept more kinds of materials, including all plastics, glass and tin cans. Residents can use the same blue recycling bins, but Jones said the city is hoping to get stickers within the month that residents can put on larger cans.

The material will be collected by Almighty Waste and taken to the city landfill. It will be dumped on a floor and then loaded into a 100-ton container.

“Then, when it starts to get full, we call up Pine Tree Waste and tell them we need a new one delivered,” Jones said. “They’ll bring us a new one and take the full one down to their sorting plant in Massachusetts. A few weeks later, they’ll send us a check.”

Jones said the city would keep any revenue from those sales.

“We don’t have any communities that are ready to do it now,” Jones said. “But what we want to do is have a framework that has been approved by councilors if they are interested.”

For the past few years, Lewiston has stored, baled and sold recycling for Auburn, Greene, Leeds, New Gloucester and Turner, giving each a share of any profits from recycling sales.

“But this will be a different thing,” Jones said. “I don’t think there will be much of a profit in it for us.”

[email protected]