Maine Program Targets Vacationers

The Maine towns of Harrison and Ogunquit are taking advantage of a pilot program, funded jointly by the Maine State Planning Office’s (SPO) waste management and recycling division and by Ecomaine, the nonprofit, municipally owned recycling and waste disposal organization serving southern Maine, intended to raise recycling percentage rates among vacationers.

“For municipalities, it is an important financial as well as environmental concern, because the higher the recycling percentage, the less money must be spent on waste disposal fees,” says Ecomaine Communications Specialist Shelley Dunn.

The town of Harrison has a permanent single-stream recycling system in place at its transfer station, and Ogunquit is offering single-stream recycling as an experiment this summer.

“Once people know how easy it is to participate in single-sort recycling and how much quicker a trip to the transfer station can be, the rate of recycling increases,” Dunn adds.

The pilot program builds on the SPO’s established recycling campaign that features a series of groups labeled as recyclers. From the series, Ecomaine chose the “Families Recycle” photo and added a new tag line: “…even on vacation.” Jetta Antonakos, SPO waste management and recycling planner, notes, “SPO provided matching funds for the Ecomaine pilot project through a grant program that is part of our ongoing Maine Recycles campaign. It makes sense to target a large summer population with a message to encourage recycling, and we’ll be interested in the results.”

With the help of vacation rental agencies, stores, town offices and volunteers, thousands of 5-inch-by-8-inch cards are being distributed that show the SPO’s family photo on one side and Ecomaine’s information on how to participate in single-sort recycling on the other. In addition, posters and a limited supply of plastic recycling bins have been distributed.

Thomas Fortier, Ogunquit town manager, asked to participate in the pilot program because the town’s population increases from 1,300 to 30,000 in the summer. “Anything we can do to raise recycling awareness and, ultimately, participation is well worth the effort,” he says.

Ecomaine will track each town’s waste and recycling tonnage through Labor Day to ascertain the recycling rate and to determine if any improvement has occurred compared to last summer.