After 14 years, Maitland to modernize recycling

What started with just one more can is compounding its way into a whole new plan as the city of Maitland closes the bidding process to restructure its recycling contract this week.

Earlier this year, the city started including a newsletter with its utility bills encouraging residents to recycle “one more can” to work on improving its 17.5 percent recycling rate, said city utility billings supervisor Roxanne Long. To build upon that, Maitland is seriously restructuring the way recycling works in the city for the first time in 14 years.

“If we do it right, for the same amount of money residents will get a greater amount of service,” Long said.

Bidding for the contract – currently serviced by Waste Services – closes Friday, May 3, and a recommendation is scheduled to be in front of the City Council in June.

Many things have changed in the recycling world since the last contract was negotiated, Long said, from sorting procedures to overall public opinion, making these changes a big step forward for the city as it sets it sights on the state of Florida’s 75-percent recycling goal by 2020.

Currently unoffered included services, such as hazardous and large waste disposal, are also options the city is looking into as the solid waste contract continues through renegotiation – this time, recycling and waste being separate.

“Right now there’s no options for [residents], so we’re trying to really give them more options,” Long said.

Mayor Howard Schieferdecker, who along with fellow Maitland Council members and staffers donned an Earth Day recycle-encouraging T-shirt to the April 22 Council meeting, said he’s excited to see Maitland expand its recycling offerings to residents.

“It’s a good thing for the environment that the city is really trying to expand,” he said. “… All these things we’re trying to do is to make it easier for our citizens.”

Residents won’t expect a change in curb service until October when the contract switches hands, but Long said upping city recycling is something all citizens can help contribute to today with as little more can in the bin.

“We want to get people aware of it again. I think recycling’s been sleeping and we just want to wake it up,” she said. “I want people to understand that it does really make a difference.”