I am a big believer in recycling and make a conscious effort of recycling everything I can. I don’t think that changing to a single-stream system will encourage more residents to recycle. Those people that recycle will continue to do so, those who choose to put out two huge gray barrels every week full of “trash” and never any recycle bins on the alternating weeks will also continue doing the same. However, now they will need to get three of the new smaller barrels to accomodate their trash needs. Why can’t the city go to a system similar to the Town of West Springfield who does the single stream recycling but if a family requires more trash space certain weeks the residents can “BUY” specific bags from the town for the additional “spill over” trash. This additional money from the sale of these trash bags could benefit the city while possibly providing “incentive” to those residents who have not been “into” recycling to make more of an effort to recycle.
