Skowhegan, Maine, selectman approve contract with Casella Recycling

According to centralmaine.com, the website for the Kennebec Journal and the Morning Sentinel reports that selectmen in Skowhegan, Maine, voted unanimously Tuesday, July 26, 2016, to approve a three-year contract with Casella Recycling LLC, Charlestown, Massachusetts, a division of Casella Waste Systems, Rutland, Vermont.

Casella and Skowhegan have been in a recycling agreement for the past 10 years, the article says. The company purchases recyclables—cardboard, plastics, glass, newspaper and mixed paper–deposited at Skowhegan’s transfer station, paying the town an average of $55,000 per year.

“Paper plates and paper products and cardboard are mixed into a brine and reused for some other product,” Code Enforcement Officer Randy Gray said to centralmaine.com. “Newspapers are put right back into newspapers sometimes as well. It’s a revenue marker. It’s almost two to one.”

Gray  says the $55,000 is a double revenue source, in that it saves a dollar for every dollar the town makes from recycling.

“It’s almost $100,000-plus a year that we make,” Gray says in the article.