Ecomaine, a municipally owned company, experienced its biggest recycling month since the facility began operation in 1991.

In August, member towns, including Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth and South Portland, collected 4,570,300 pounds of recyclable plastic, glass, paper, cardboard and metal. Kevin Roche, general manager, said the August 2006 total beat the previous one-month record – set just eight months ago, in December 2005 – by more than 28 tons.

Roche pointed out that every pound of material recycled is one less pound in the waste stream and one less pound billed to local taxpayers.

“The more our citizens recycle,” he added, “the more efficient and cost-effective the operation becomes for our 27 participating communities.”

Since June 2005, Ecomaine – formerly Regional Waste Systems – has broken its own recycling record four times, which Roche attributed to an increasingly conscientious population and efforts by municipalities to make recycling as easy as possible. He suspects records will be broken even more frequently when Ecomaine’s state-of-the-art single stream equipment is operational in May 2007. The $3.7 million project will allow residents to throw all their recyclables together, without, for example, separating plastics from paper.

“There are numerous environmental and fiscal advantages,” said Roche, “only one of which is increased recycling rates due to the system’s simplicity for residents.”

Ecomaine is the largest recycler in Maine, which allows its 21 owner-communities and six associate communities to benefit from economy of scale in both volume and operational costs. For further recycling information, call Missi Labbe at 773-1738.