FARMINGTON — A nonprofit recycling facility is accepting more types of plastic to find a way to keep waste out of landfills and reduce what towns are paying for recycling services.

Two towns in Franklin County signed up for the three-month experiment, which allows them to send more plastic waste to the Sandy River Recycling Association in Farmington, the nonprofit agency that handles recycling services for 21 towns.

Instead of just recycling a certain kind of plastic– typically water bottles, milk jugs and some other containers — the facility will accept a variety of other plastics from residents in Farmington and Carrabassett Valley, the towns that joined the project.

Examples of such other plastics include baby bottles, packaging materials, squeezable juice bottles, yogurt containers and some container lids.

The trial run started this week. Ron Slater, the facility’s manager, is optimistic that it could play a key role in reducing waste across Maine.

“I’d like to see it work. The more we can take out of the waste stream, the better off we’ll be down the road,” Slater said.

The program also may help eliminate fees taxpayers are paying for certain recycling services, he said.

Many of the towns in Franklin County contract for recycling services with the facility, which also has the same deal with Sidney and Mount Vernon in Kennebec County and Mercer and New Portland in Somerset County.

Towns pay an annual fee based on the amount of recyclables dropped off at the facility, which then processes and sells that material to companies for reuse, according to Slater.

Each town is charged $52.50 per ton, with residents dropping off recyclables at 18 pickup sites before the items are sent to the facility in Farmington to be processed.

That fee could be reduced or eliminated altogether if the facility can find a market for more types of recyclable materials, Slater said.

Previously, the facility took only that one type of plastic because it can be resold to companies at a higher price than other plastics, he said. It’s known as No. 2 plastic because of the recyclable materials’ numerical ranking system. The ranks are stamped on the containers and based on the type of material used to make them.

Companies pay more for No. 2 plastic because it can be reused easily in manufacturing and other businesses, according to Slater.

The other plastics now being accepted at the facility are ranked between No. 3 and No. 7, with No. 6 recyclables excluded because of the inability to process the Styrofoam in that category alongside the other plastics, he said.

There aren’t as many companies that reuse those other plastics, and that has to change to make it worthwhile to continue to process them, Slater said.

The facility can offset its processing costs, thus lowering or eliminating the fees, based on how much revenue it generates from selling the materials, he said.

Most of the agency’s revenue comes from selling high-grade paper, newspapers and cardboard.

Taxpayers in Farmington are paying about $8,000 per year for the recycling service, according to Denis Castonguay, the town’s public works director.

That bill may go up if more recyclable waste is sent to the facility, but taxpayers will actually save money by diverting that waste from the landfill, he said.

It costs more than $63 per ton to send bulky waste to the landfill in Norridgewock, which is where all of the other plastics had been going before the recycling facility’s trial program, according to Castonguay, who represents Farmington on the recycling agency’s board of directors that consists of officials from each member town.

“The more we can send to the recycling facility, the better,” he said.

While demand for the other plastics is almost non-existent because of the low resale price, Castonguay is hopeful that new technology can make the agency’s experiment a success and a model for other recycling operations statewide.

“In this day and age, they’re finding more and more products all the time that can be manufactured by using recycled products,” he said.

David Robinson — 861-9287

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