Curbside recycling pickup in Anson and Starks will resume on a regular schedule Monday, after the company that the two towns contract with neglected to pick up recycling for the last few weeks, according to the head of the Anson Starks Recycling Committee.
The committee plans to meet on Wednesday to discuss a long-term plan for recycling pickup, for which the towns have contracted for years with Three Rivers Disposal and Recycling in Anson.
“Pretty soon people aren’t going to be recycling,” said Arnold Luce, chairman of the Anson Starks Recycling Committee and chairman of Anson’s Board of Selectmen. “Getting people to recycle is something that we’ve worked on over the last few years, but if the recycling isn’t picked up, they’re just going to give up on it.”
Luce said he wasn’t sure of the specific date on which the company stopped picking up recycling materials, but he said it was at least two weeks ago. A woman who answered the phone at the company would not provide details of the contract the company had with the town or why it stopped picking up recycling.
“We don’t do that,” she said, when asked why the company hasn’t been picking up recycling in Anson and Starks. She would not comment further.
“I think they had manpower problems. That’s my understanding of it,” Luce said, adding that the company hadn’t notified the town that there would be any changes in scheduling.
The towns of Anson and Starks together form the Kennebec Valley Regional Waste Corp., which had a contract with Three Rivers to collect recycling, Luce said. The nonprofit corporation was started in 1992 to pick up recyclables in Anson, Starks, Moscow and Bingham, but Moscow and Bingham have opted out of the program since then.
Luce said the contract with Three Rivers had been in place for several years, but he wasn’t sure when it was set to expire. The recycling committee decided to terminate the contract after the lack of recycling pickup the last few weeks, he said.
In the short term, the towns plan to run recycling pickup on their own, Luce said. They already own a truck and a building in Bingham where they can process recyclables, he said.
“The important thing is that people know there is someone who will be back out there picking it up,” he said. “Between Anson and Starks, I think if the two towns work together on this, we can find a solution.”
A long-term plan for recycling will be discussed at the committee’s regularly scheduled meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Anson Town Office.
Rachel Ohm — 612-2368
Twitter: @rachel_ohm
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Comments are no longer available on this story