For Montville, Recycling Is a Win-Win (with Video)

At the very heart of Earth Day is the concept of recycling, and for Montville, says Flo Turner, recycling is a "win-win!"

Montville makes $28 for every ton of recycling it collects. It pays $68 for every ton of bulky waste or household trash it generates, Turner says.

And it's easy!

These days, single-stream recyling means you don't even have to separate bottles, cans and paper. It can all go together, in the same container, to be separated later in the process.

Thinking about recycling goes farther than your household trash, though. Harvey Orenstein, who owns Yale's Inc. with his brother Phillip, says that more people than ever are looking for used car parts.

If a car has been in an accident, even if it's been totaled, many of its parts are still usable. The seats could be fine, the engine and transmission could be perfectly usable, Orenstein says - and they're cheaper than new.

All parts are checked out before they're sold, he says, and they don't recycle everything (belts and spark plug, for instance, would never be resold).

"More people are using the service," Orenstein says, adding that they're often using it in conjunction with the internet, to locate and price parts.

And, he says, they're getting more particular, asking for specific colors for items.

"Years ago, that wasn't the case. They'd paint it or they wouldn't paint it. Now they're trying to save that extra dollar."

The fender farm - that interesting fenced-in area at the corner of Maple Avenue and Route 163, came about as a result of a conference he attended in Florida. Fenders are relatively fragile, and can't just be laid on the ground. But he saw a guy with an arrangement like his current one and it solved his fender problem.

At the transfer station, there are recycling options above the paper-glass-cans one. The best items go to the non-profit tag sales, and there is an area where those items are collected. Items that don't sell at the weekly tag sales, or items that don't quite make the grade, go into a freecycle area. You can go and take whatever you like from this area, and it run from furniture to toys to books, and everything in between.

Beth Missios, administrative assistant in the Department of Public Works, and Tiffany Williams, a DPW staffer, say recycling is smart and saves money.

And it's great to get into the habit of it now, they say. The town recently heard a presentation from a Stonington official, on that town's pay-per-bag program (click here to read that story). If Montville did embark on a similar program, recycling would become a serious money-saving option.

In the meantime, says Missios, "it's a no-brainer."