Area town managers whose towns are members of Oxford County Regional Solid Waste Corp. will meet as a group in early February to make a recommendation for a decision by the OCRSWC on whether the organization should make the leap to single stream recycling.

Currently residents sort materials themselves before depositing them at their transfer station, and OCRSWC collects and processes them in Norway.

Under a single-stream plan most recyclables are deposited in a common container at the transfer station and shipped together to a commercial plant that separates them. Single stream is more convenient for users and typically increases participation, but because the sorting is done commercially towns receive less reimbursement proportionally for the recyclables.

Some area towns, including Waterford, Stoneham, and Albany, already operate under such a system.

OCRSWC has been pondering whether to go that route for some time.

At last week’s meeting of the Greenwood & Woodstock Transfer Station board, Woodstock Selectman Steve Bies, an OCRSWC board member, said a decision will likely be made by the middle of this year.

He said having some towns go one route and others another would probably be too “complex” for the organization to deal with, so an all-ornothing decision is likely.

“I hope these two towns will maintain membership in the organization even if the organization chooses to go a way either town wouldn’t have chosen to go, because I really think we gain by working together, by making decisions as a 17-town unit, rather than 17 different units,” he said.

In other G&W business, Greenwood Town Manager Kim Sparks reported that she had heard from Randy McMullin of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection about the stump dump.

Sparks said he told her the agency does not want brush burned any more at the site.

The board discussed other options, and settled on looking into the possibility of having the material trucked away to be ground up.