AUBURN — Curbside recycling will return Monday, according to city officials.

The city’s twice monthly collections resume July 8. Residents who normally have their recycling collected on the first and the third weeks of the month had no collections last week, the first week of July and the first week of Auburn’s 2013-14 fiscal year.

“But the program will return and we will be ready to go by July 8,” Public Works Director Denis D’Auteuil said.

Councilors voted in June to $1.7 million in cuts, and that included $27,000 for the curbside program.

They changed their minds on July 1, reinstating the program and allocating $25,000 for it this year.

Auburn began offering the dual-sort recycling program in September 2011, offering curbside collections twice each month. Residents put paper and cardboard in a different bin from plastic, metal and glass. A city truck collects those materials four weeks each month. Some neighborhoods had their recycling collected on the first and third weeks, others on the second and fourth.

The program will begin again, picking up the same schedule.

The city put out bins to collect recycling while curbside service was discontinued, and one will remain. The bins were at Mid-Maine Waste Action Corp.’s Goldthwaite Road plant south of downtown and outside the city’s Public Works shop on Gracelawn Road north of downtown.

D’Auteauil said the MMWAC bin would remain, but the Gracelawn Road bin would be removed by Monday.

“We’ll have it up through the weekend for those people who missed their collections on the first week of the month,” D’Auteuil said. “With curbside beginning again, we don’t need it.”

The city is still in the process of replacing the curbside collection program with a more frequent and expanded program. Plans call for contracting with a company to provide bins and offer residents single-sort recycling beginning next summer.

staylor@sunjournal.com

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