NORWAY — Oxford County Regional Recycling is gearing up for a single-stream recycling program at the beginning of the new year — and if the effort works, Norway and Paris residents may follow suit sometime early next year.

Vern Maxfield, chairman of this year’s budget committee in Norway, said he expects the change will come, but not immediately.

“I think Norway and Paris may be following quicker than we think,” Maxfield said of the single-stream recycling system. The system means all paper, plastics, metals and other recyclables are thrown into one collection truck without being sorted, with the exceptions of bulky items and solid waste, Maxfield said.

While the process may initially be a little more expensive, Maxfield said the benefits of the single-stream system will be quickly realized.

Oxford County Regional Recycling, a quasi-municipal corporation, currently provides recycling collection, processing and marketing services to its member communities. Processing is done at its facility next to the transfer station on Brown Street in Norway. It also collects electronic waste for disposal.

Norway and Paris operate the solid waste transfer station on Brown Street and a construction/demolition debris facility on Frost Hill, also in Norway, under Norway-Paris Solid Waste Inc., a quasi-municipal corporation. Residents recycle at the Brown Street facility.

Norway selectmen recently received a letter, informing them that the Oxford County Regional Recycling board voted April 9 to authorize planning for single-stream recycling beginning Jan. 1, 2015, for its 17 member towns, including Norway, Paris, Woodstock and Hebron, who want to participate.

Maxfield said the board is now preparing a request for proposal to go out to bid. Recycling companies like ecomaine and Casella Waste Systems, which is setting up single-stream recycling program in Lewiston, are expected to bid on the project.

In an April 14 letter to the Norway Board of Selectmen, Stephen Bies, chairman of Oxford County Regional Recycling Corp. board, stated that if the town goes to single-stream recycling, all recyclables would go into the bins at the transfer station. The materials would be delivered to the recycling facility to be compacted and then sent to a facility in either Lewiston or South Portland.

The transfer station could also install a compactor for all recyclables and ship the full containers to the facility to save two-thirds or more in transportation fees, Bies said in the letter.

Maxfield said that several years ago, OCRR and Norway-Paris Solid Waste each paid for a study on how towns could save on recycling by increasing recycling and selling more material and by decreasing the amount of garbage to save on disposal fees. Since then, he said, the idea for single-stream recycling just “snowballed.”

Voters at the Norway June 16 annual town meeting were told that although the current system is well run and participation is good, people like the convenience of single-stream recycling.

“To take a system that’s working and change it to a new system is nothing we take lightly,” said Town Manager David Holt at the meeting.

ldixon@sunjournal.com

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