By Cecilia Nasmith/Northumberland 89.7/Today’s Northumberland
Northumberland residents suffering through wind-blown waste on stormy collection days have not been forgotten.
A few simple solutions were offered Monday at Northumberland County council’s Public Works Committee by Associate Director of Operations Adam McCue.
The most surprising one – get your own recycling container with a lid.
“There is no requirement to use the county containers,” McCue said.
“If they want to purchase their own, which has a lid, they can do that.”
In such a case, he added, the householder can get in touch with the county, which will mail appropriate stickers free of charge that will notify the collection trucks that this receptacle contains recycling for collection.
The discussion arose from Warden Brian Ostrander’s report on telephone calls he’d been getting from residents worried about wind-blown recycling during turbulent collection days like last Monday.
“Members of the community took it upon themselves to put their recycling in plastic bags, which we know is not part of the policy but doing everything to make sure they didn’t redistribute their recycling all over the municipality,” he said.
Then, the collection trucks refused to take it as per policy, and Ostrander began getting calls.
McCue explained the policy. Until 2026, the county is the contractor for this collection, and it delivers it all to Miller Waste in Grafton in the two-stream arrangement.
“If we were to collect in bags and bring it to that facility, they could penalize us for bringing in contaminated loads or outright refuse those loads. For that reason, we don’t allow anything in bags except shredded paper and plastic bags.”
Aside from the privately purchased lidded bin, McCue had two other suggestions.
One is for households to ensure they have sufficient waste-storage capacity that they can skip a week’s collection if necessary.
The other is to fill your recycling or waste-paper bin no fuller than four inches short of the top of the bin.
