After a two-week vacation, this seems like the time to talk about fall cleaning, so here are updates to earlier columns about wood waste and batteries.
Wood Waste
Wood items of any type are not recyclable under our curbside program, including the small wood crates containing clementine oranges sold at the supermarkets. Small items may be put in your trash and some wood items are accepted for recycling at the old landfill on Graham Road, now called a processing station.
The current rules at the old landfill allow wood waste, but they say unpainted wood and no pressure-treated wood. Then they charge you $10 per cubic yard (by a wholly subjective estimate), with a $5 minimum charge. A cubic yard is a space 3 feet long, by 3 feet wide, by 3 feet high, or any other combination that equals 27 when the numbers are multiplied together. A small pickup in which the load is kept below the side rails will be about a cubic foot, or maybe slightly less. A larger truck somewhat more. You won’t really know how much you have until you get there, but it’s been my experience that the folks there work for wages, not commissions, so they will tend to try to underestimate the size of the load, not overestimate it.
If you have scrap wood that does meet the unpainted and not pressure treated criteria, there are several other alternatives to dealing with it. One is to take them to the Casella Transfer Station off State Road in West Bath. They will take them as trash, and also charge a fee of some sort. The better way, if they are still usable, is to donate them to either the ReStore, run by Habitat for Humanity, across from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, on Rte 302 in Topsham, or Building Materials Exchange, which is a similar kind of place in Lisbon, just before the Lewiston line. They actually seem to have more of that sort of thing at the Lisbon operation than the ReStore, when I’ve been in either location, but either would get them reused.
Batteries
Batteries are tricky because they come in three basic types, and several variants of each:
Flashlight batteries (AA, AAA, C, D, 9 volt, alkaline or non-alkaline) may be put in the trash. Years ago these batteries contained mercury but that has long been discontinued in their manufacture and they may be safely placed in the trash.
Rechargeable batteries must be recycled and not put in the trash. However, they must be disposed of at a designated Brunswick drop off box for rechargeable batteries; that is located at the processing station at the site of the old landfill on Graham Road, which is now the only place where the town will accept them, and I am not aware of any other places.
Button batteries containing mercury, and special lithium-ion non-rechargeable batteries (often used for digital cameras) are deemed hazardous and need to be safely stored and brought to the Town’s fall Household Hazardous Waste Collection program.
Automobile batteries should be returned to the dealer for recycling of the lead and other materials they contain. They are not accepted at the processing facility on Graham Road, or at any other location in town, other than dealers.
The Recycle Bin is a weekly column on what to recycle, what not to recycle, and why, in Brunswick. The public is encouraged to submit questions by email to brunsrecycleinfo@gmail.com. Harry Hopcroft is a member of the Brunswick Recycling and Sustainability Committee.
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