AUBURN — A city committee is recommending a series of changes to Auburn’s solid waste and recycling programs, and will present the report during a public hearing Thursday.

The report from the Sustainability and Natural Resources board gives an outline of several changes that should be considered, including a program that accepts all recycling commodities as well as provides wheeled and lidded containers.

It also includes recommendations on data management, staffing and public engagement to better educate residents and track results.

“No person currently overlooks all of Auburn’s solid waste management. Auburn needs such a person,” said Ben Lounsbury, a member of the board.

According to an executive summary of the report, current household solid waste management contracts for Auburn are expiring at the end of this year, and the report’s recommendations “are intended to support the city in its writing of new solid waste agreements.”

The report recommends that the city continue its current service level for curbside collection of household trash and recycling — including the Gracelawn Road drop-off option for recycling — while also conducting household surveys and listening sessions “to explore alternative and less costly collection strategies for both trash and recycling.”

The committee process to look at Auburn’s solid waste plan, approved by the council in January, came after the previous City Council ended Auburn’s curbside recycling program last year. The decision resulted in months of debate over recycling, a beleaguered drop-off-only system and a new-look curbside program implemented late last year.

The city’s current recycling program, rolled out in December, accepts certain plastics, cardboard and mixed paper, but does not accept glass and metals. Before the change was made, former Mayor Jason Levesque said negotiations with contractor Casella centered on what materials are being recycled and used in secondary markets.

The committee’s report said the city should again accept all recyclable materials, including glass and metals, to ready Auburn for the state’s rollout of the Extended Producer Responsibility Program.

Maine’s EPR for packaging, approved in 2021, will require most producers of packaging to pay into a fund based on the amount and the recyclability of packaging associated with their products. According to the law, the funds will then be used to “reimburse municipalities for eligible recycling and waste management costs, make investments in recycling infrastructure, and help Maine citizens understand how to recycle.”

The committee’s report said that by recycling all items on Maine’s EPR list, Auburn can access new funding to offset collection and processing costs for household solid waste.

“Reimbursement for these costs through the EPR program will increase with increasing recycling participation rates and tons of material recycled,” the report states.

Lounsbury said in order to receive payments under EPR, municipalities will be required to maintain required data to the state. He said that means “meticulous record keeping is in order, and Auburn does not currently have satisfactorily meticulous record keeping.”

According to the state, the EPR program will not begin until 2026, with the first payments to municipalities occurring in 2027. Right now the state is conducting stakeholder outreach to develop program rules.

When briefly ending the recycling program in May of 2023, Auburn officials argued that it is cheaper to send material to Maine Waste to Energy in Auburn for incineration than to pay for a curbside program, where some materials end up incinerated anyway. Auburn has also historically experienced very low recycling rates.

However, before he was elected in December, Mayor Jeff Harmon campaigned on bringing back a more robust recycling program. When the Sustainability and Natural Resources board was tasked with conducting a comprehensive review of the city’s programs, he said that it was “unfortunate and a mistake” for the prior council to stop curbside pickup, and that that new curbside program should only be a “stopgap measure.”

At the time, some councilors also urged the committee to look at a “market analysis” for what is cost effective to recycle.

The new report recommends that “new recycling agreements should allow the city a role in deciding which commodities are recycled.”

Most cities, including Lewiston, are also in the process of transitioning to an automated trash pickup system, where contractors such as Casella use trucks and bins that automatically lift trash and/or recycling into the truck. Auburn is also in talks to shift to the automated system.

Some of the report’s recommendation may sound familiar.

A previous report produced in 2020 also urged the city to invest in improved recycling infrastructure, like city-specific covered bins used by other large municipalities. Another suggestion was to conduct a broader education program to boost Auburn’s notoriously low participation rate and high “contamination” rate among the material collected.

When Auburn’s current recycling program was rolled out, officials told the public that the new agreement with Casella would include a mobile app with service alerts and public education efforts.

The new committee report said a public engagement effort should “inform and involve Auburn households in all aspects of the city’s solid waste program using regular data reports, restructured staffing, revisions to the Auburn solid waste ordinance and Comprehensive Plan.”