Minutes from the Salem Recycling Committee
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
7:00 – 8:30 pm
Attendees: Kate Giddings, Marcia Lambert, Lynn Murray, Jennifer Percy, Julie Rose, Jason Silva, and Liz Vago
The meeting was called to order at 7:10 pm. There was discussion of the new recycling contract and its impact. The current rate of recycling is 9%; a figure that should be emphasized now both to encourage greater recycling and as a benchmark figure.
Recycling Programs at Salem Schools
There is a young lady from the Collins Middle School who has been contacting Julie about greater recycling efforts there. A discussion ensued about how to best work with the schools to expand current recycling efforts and how to make it part of the curriculum. It was stated that the Northside has as part of its contract an educational component. However, the implementation of such a program is not explicitly spelled out.
Jason reported that Northside has meet with the Saltonstall School. He said that Mark George is the Northside POC for these efforts. We need to find out what the high school does regarding recycling. Are the science teachers at these schools involved in any sort of an environmental program that touches upon recycling efforts?
Liz volunteered to gather information about the schools to form a baseline on what is going on in terms of recycling. Mark George will be contacted as he has the lead on this effort. There was a discussion about creating a curriculum event for the schools.
New Recycling Contract
So far the feedback has been very positive and participation has been strong. There is clearly a need for more education about the elements of the new contract to make sure that citizens know about increased collection, trash limits, rejection stickers etc. After viewing the rejection sticker, there were suggestions for improving it and making sure that reasons for rejection are clear.
In terms of the business community, there is definitely a need for more clarification in terms of who is eligible to recycle. There was also a discussion about the need to continually update the web site and to add useful links.
In order to lay out a roadmap for an educational campaign, a meeting was scheduled for August 12th. This meeting was held and the results have been distributed.
The next meeting will be held on Tuesday, September 2nd at 7:00 pm
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