With Belmont's seven-year contract with BFI for collection of household trash and recyclables expiring in June, the town needs to decide whether to expand its recycling program. My analysis of costs and revenues under the current waste management plan (see page 3) indicates that the town last year netted almost $200,000 from its recycling program, although there is no guarantee that recycling will remain profitable in the future.

A new town committee is to study the issue and help to develop a plan for managing solid waste through 2005. Following a presentation by an ad hoc group of citizens organized last May to promote recycling, the selectmen voted unanimously on November 6 to charter a temporary Solid Waste and Recycling Advisory Committee. In December, six members of the original ad hoc group plus two others were appointed to the committee. The members are Neal Brown and Ken Siskind (co-chairs), Joseph Curro, Janice Biederman, Kevin Brosnan, Nancy Davis, Mark Davis, and Fariba Cipriano.

Most of these people are interested in expanding recycling in order to protect the environment. Incineration of trash is a major cause of air pollution and of global warming. Using landfills as an alternative not only mars the landscape but may pollute subsurface water supplies. Removing hazardous waste such as mercury and PCBs from the waste stream before they enter the air or water supply is essential to maintain public health. Finally, reuse of products conserves resources and cuts down on pollution generated in  the manufacture of new products.

Recycling Options Explored

One option the committee will explore is to recycle a wider range of products, such as junk mail, white paper, numbers 3 through 7 plastics, and cardboard boxes. The KTI facility in Charleston, where Belmont's recyclables are sent for processing and marketing, currently accepts all of these items from other towns, but they were not specified in our present contract largely because of cost.

Encouraging residents to recycle more, through education and publicity, including programs in schools and other institutions, would also be effective. Another option is switching from biweekly to weekly pickups, which increased recycling by 30 percent in the town of Concord.

Some communities offer drop-off days and swap centers for exchanging rather than trashing throwaways. Because Belmont, unlike some towns, does not have an office dedicated specifically to recycling and waste management, volunteers would be needed to promote and staff such efforts, especially since town departments have been ordered to cut budgets this year by 3 percent. If there are profits to be gained by recycling, however, it might be of economic advantage to the town to invest in these activities.

About 90 communities in Massachusetts, including Concord and Worcester, have been attracted to the "pay to throw" option, and other communities, like Lexington, are considering it. Residents are charged according to the number of trash barrels they put out. Experience demonstrates that shifting the cost away from the property tax base and adopting a fee-based system induces residents to throw away fewer items and recycle more.

New Solid Waste Contracts to Be Negotiated

Belmont currently has two solid waste contracts. The one with BFI, which expires in June, covers curbside collection of all solid waste, composting of curbside yard waste, and processing and marketing of recyclables. The new Solid Waste Committee plans to have a Request for Proposal for a new contract prepared by April 1 of this year.

The other contract, with Massachusetts Refusetech Inc. (MRI), covers incineration of trash at the waste-to-energy plant in North Andover. This contract, which accounts for almost 60 percent of the town's solid waste bill, does not expire until 2005.

Under the MRI contract, which the town entered into in 1985, Belmont must pay to dispose of approximately 15,000 tons of trash each year, regardless of whether that amount is actually delivered. The town currently sends a little less than 10,000 tons to the site, leaving it with about 5000 tons of unused capacity. Belmont is able to sell the excess to private haulers but the price per ton it receives is only about half the price it pays for it: $70 compared with $130 per ton. To make matters worse, the $130 it pays per ton for the capacity it does use is double the going rate.

It is obvious that expiration of the MRI contract in 2005 will open significant opportunities for reducing the cost of solid waste disposal, which, in turn, alters the financial advantages of recycling.

How Belmont Makes Money on Recycling

Whether the town gains or loses financially from recycling depends not only on what it pays to recycle but on the income generated by recycling, and what it would have cost to trash those same recyclables. When all these factors are taken into account, it appears that Belmont made a profit on recycling last year. Here's why:
Lower trash-collection costs. Without recycling, the town would have had to pick up and dispose of 2690 additional tons of trash. Opinions differ about how much that would have cost but, assuming that BFI would have charged us the same price per ton to collect recyclables as trash as it did to collect the rest of our trash (see Table 1), recycling saved the town $63 per ton last year ($623,812/9923 tons), or $167,000. (There would be no additional savings on incineration charges, since, as noted, the town is already committed to paying MRI for more trash than it delivers.)

Excess capacity sales. We saw that under the town's incineration contract, Belmont must pay MRI to dispose of 15,000 tons of trash a year and if we produce less trash than that, we can sell the unused capacity to private haulers at the market rate ($70 per ton last year). By diverting trash to recycling, Belmont freed up 2690 tons of capacity, which it sold for $188,000.

Sale of newspapers. The income from this source varies from year to year. Last year, the town netted $75,000, but it will earn nothing in 2001 because of the falling price of newsprint.

In summary, Belmont paid $240,555 last year for collection and recycling of 2690 tons of newspapers and commingled containers. But it avoided trash collection costs and earned revenues from the sale of newspapers and of excess incinerator capacity that totalled $430,000. The overall result was a net gain for the town of $189,445.

A Short History of Belmont's Waste Management

Belmont used to incinerate its trash at a plant off Concord Avenue near the Lexington line. In 1975, after the state required the upgrading of landfills around incinerators, the town began to send its solid waste to an out-of-town landfill. In 1985, as pressures built to cut down on landfill expansion, a consortium of 23 towns, including Belmont, agreed to underwrite the debt service and operating costs of a new waste-to-energy plant to be built by MRI in North Andover. In exchange, the towns would have their trash processed for 20 years. Each town was to pay yearly for disposal of a specified amount, at a price per ton that would vary depending on revenues from energy generated on site. With energy prices at peak levels in the 1970s, officials figured that such revenues would hold down disposal costs. Unfortunately, sagging oil prices depressed the price of energy, so the cost of disposal has risen and will continue to rise. Almost 60 percent of Belmont's $2.2 million net solid-waste bill last year went to cover the cost of incineration.

Belmont began its first curbside recycling program in l991, when the state banned the disposal of newspapers and commingled containers in landfills and incinerators. The state set a goal of recycling 42 percent of solid waste by 2000. Belmont reached that goal last year, but the state as a whole lags far behind.

Nancy Dorfman is an economist who lives in Belmont.