Recycling in Limerick, Maine

This week a piece of mail arrived addressed to "Postal Patron." Normally, our being addressed as "postal patron" wouldn't appeal to us and the offending piece would quickly end up in the recycling bin. But not this time. The return address said, "Limerick Transfer Station & Recycling Facility, so we were intrigued enough to remove the staple from the folded sheets. 

Our dump is a one-stop facility for a lotta stuff. And I do mean Stuff. Besides the regular household recycling, there are sections for construction waste, appliances, used-up furniture, grass clippings and leaves (they compost this for residents to take home for their gardens) and rechargeable batteries and compact florescent lightbulbs. And, there's "The Take-It Shoppe." We love this- although we mostly drop things off (yeah, that funky plaid shirt that never got worn, and the funny-scented candle that wasn't allowed into the house), but we also found some nice glass vases that we used for the Francis Small flower arrangements. The shoppe serves a genuine purpose. 

One of the arrangements

We are very fortunate that our town dump has single sort recycling. No need to load half a dozen barrels into the pick-up truck for glass, cans, cardboard, paper, and plastic. Just one is all it takes, and unloading it is a quick tip of the barrel. Not that we have a lot of garbage- we don't and more about that later.

Anyway, the whole point of it is this. According to the “Postal Patron” letter, the recycling facility saved this little town $45,000 in 2010. Over 1000 tons of materials were recycled. Separating demolition debris saved tipping fees. The single sort recycling, started 2 years ago, resulted in 118 tons of voluntarily recycled materials. The Take It Shoppe reduces the quantity of materials that would otherwise be added to landfills. Thirty-eight tons of leaf and yard waste didn't go to the landfill. Without recycling, Limerick residents would have to deal with the cost of disposing of 275 additional tons of waste per year.

Now, that is respectable. The savings goes straight to our property tax bottom line. Our town's population has increased 29% in 10 years (including myself) and the fees for handling the town's waste have gone up. In spite of this, the cost of Limerick's trash removal for 2010 was $30,000 less than it cost in 2004.  Wow. 

Recycling is alive and well here in Limerick. Our Transfer Station motto is "Reduce, Reuse and Recycle". Since that fits right into our own homestead lifestyle, we'll soon be posting our own experience of reducing our consumption of energy and waste, reusing what we can and recycling what we don't reuse. -G.H.

Francis Small Heritage Trust

Imagine a totally green event. The Francis Small Heritage Trust is a local land trust actively working to preserve areas from development and allowing public access to wilderness. Last week the organization held a fundraiser consisting of dinner, concert, and silent auction. Singer and acoustic guitarist Mitch Alden, of Now Is Now, provided the entertainment with great songs and some virtuoso finger picking. 

The food for the event was provided by members. An emphasis had been placed on using local ingredients as much as possible. There were delicious lasagnas, salads and desserts- all fabulous. I contributed a pasta salad using chives, perennial onions, arugula, lovage, upland cress, lettuce, red giant mustard, carrots and kale from our garden.  

We ate from compostable plates and bowls, and after eating dropped them and leftover food scraps into a barrel labeled “compostables”. A large selection of totally unmatched mugs were brought by members for coffee and water. A member contributed a stack of cloth napkins. Tables were attractively covered with contributed fabrics. Marsha made a floral arrangement for each table consisting of flowers, ferns, and other interesting flora gathered from woods to garden. The glass containers for these we had gotten from the “Take-It Shoppe” at the town dump. The guests were encouraged to take an arrangement home with them. 

A silent auction featured products and services contributed by local businesses. I ended up with a gift certificate from Nature’s Way, our favorite local plant nursery, and Marsha hovered over a salt-fired piece of pottery until she was sure it was hers. The auction seemed like a great way to involve the community in a cause.     

We have become involved with this group because we totally agree with the philosophy of preserving land. The idea of placing an easement on a piece of land appeals to us. There are many land trusts in Maine, and we have done some research to learn about easements. 

An easement is a legal means of insuring that property keeps the use that the owner wants. Rather than having a piece of property covered with buildings and pavement, and thereby taken out of nature, it can be protected to prevent development. An easement can be subject to certain criteria from “forever wild” to simply “not build-able.” Some are farm easements that keep land in farming. Land protected by easements is not taken out of the real estate market. These lands can still be bought and sold. But unlike deeded restrictions, the easement stays with the land. 

We love this idea. And the dinner and concert was a wonderful time. It truly amazed us that an organization can put on a fun evening with great food, excellent music, and local products to bid on, all at little cost to the very environment it works to preserve. We were impressed. Very, very impressed. -G.H.