When residents pull into the transfer station in Pelham with a car full of trash, they get an earful in return.
"We all put in a concerted effort to try to convince people to recycle more," Bruce Mason, transfer station superintendent, said. "I think it's worked — to a point."
Over the last two years, Pelham's recycling rate has jumped from 19 percent to 30 percent. And residents have been rewarded monetarily for their response to Mason's educational talks — they pay about half as much for solid waste disposal as other area towns.
The cost to recycle remains much less than the cost of throwing away solid waste, but 2007 figures released by the state Department of Environmental Services this week show that concept still isn't catching on. Statewide, the recycling rate remained about 20 percent for the fifth year in a row, according to Donald Maurer, supervisor of the state solid waste technical assistance section.
In a new attempt to educate towns and residents about how much they are costing themselves, the state also released the price per capita of each town's solid waste budget for the first time.
"We wanted towns and people to see that this is not cheap," Maurer said. "That's the result."
People in most local towns are paying between $75 and $85 a year for trash disposal. Pelham residents are getting a deal at just $39.55 a year.
But Salem residents, who recycle just 16 percent of their trash, paid $168.16 each to haul out more than 12,000 tons of trash in 2007.
The state average was $77 per person in 2007, totaling $104 million, Maurer said. He's working with the state municipal association to educate town officials about the benefits of recycling.
"I think people should look at cost," Maurer said. "The reason is, right now, if you think about a town, one of the few (budget items) they can control is this."
Newton officials have responded by relaying that information to their residents when they visit the transfer station, manager Andrew Morse said. The town's recycling rate increased by 5 percent between 2006 and 2007.
Morse said all he had to do was tell residents that it costs them $90 a ton to have trash hauled out of the dump and just $30 a ton to have recycled items taken away.
Pelham, the only other town that's seen a recent increase in its recycling rate, took a similar approach.
"If anybody comes into this facility and says they don't know about recycling, they must be wearing blinders when they drive through the recycling area and go right to the trash," Mason said.
But all the local towns could still recycle more and attempt to reach the state's goal of 40 percent, he said.
