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Lisbon considers curbside recycling

LISBON — The village is the latest local community to be approached about starting a residential curbside recycling program.

Tom Butch, recycling educator/outreach coordinator for the Solid Waste District, attended this week’s Village Council meeting to urge they consider starting a curbside recycling program where residents would be able to leave household recyclable materials in marked containers at the curb for pickup by a hauler.

For this to work, the village would contract with a single hauler to provide trash-removal services for everyone, presumably at lower price than households are charged by whatever hauler they use. This single hauler would agree to also provide curbside recycling pickup services.

If this is unacceptable, Butch said council could contract with a single hauler at a locked-in rate to also provide curbside recycling but also give residents the option of keeping their hauler — the so-called preferred hauler program.

Councilman Peter Wilson was enthusiastic about the prospects of bringing curbside recycling to town. “So what’s preventing us from doing this? Can we revisit this?” he said.

“Sure,” said Mayor Roger Gallo, who indicated he favored exploring the preferred hauler option. He noted that residents were overwhelmingly opposed when they looked into the single-hauler option to provide curbside recycling about 20 years ago.

The Solid Waste District serves Columbiana, Carroll and Harrison counties. Its recycling program consists of Dumpster-like containers at 79 sites in the three counties where residents can drop off their recyclable materials. There are 33 drop-off sites in Columbiana County.

Butch estimated 20 percent to 30 percent of SWD households recycle, but he believes the number would jump to 60 percent if the convenience of curbside recycling was available. He said increasing the recycling rate is critical since 80 percent of what is thrown away can be recycled.

“Recycling is by far the best and easiest way to reduce what goes into a landfill,” Butch said.

Butch has approached other communities in the county — Salem, Leetonia and Columbiana –to determine if they might be interested in starting a curbside recycling program. He said the point of these visits is to start the “conversation.”

He said the village benefits because there would be less truck traffic because there would be fewer haulers operating in town, thereby reducing wear and tear on the streets.

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