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Newburyport details organics pilot, recycling center and rising disposal costs
Summary
Newburyport’s sustainability manager described a 1,000-household organics pilot, a multi-stream recycling center and an overflow bag program, and warned municipal officials that local disposal costs have risen about 40% as regional facilities reach capacity.
Newburyport officials used a regional workshop to highlight city-level steps for reducing waste and to flag rising costs for collection and disposal.
"We have a 1,000-household organics pilot in Newburyport," said Molly Edinburgh, the city’s sustainability manager, describing the city’s emphasis on organics diversion and reuse programs. Edinburgh said the city also runs a recycling center with about 20 material streams, operates a RecycleIQ curbside‑audit program and uses RDP funding annually (about $18,000 this year) for outreach and equipment purchases.
Edinburgh said Newburyport’s overflow bag program has sold roughly 2,600 bags since its start last year and that the community seeks more year‑round hazardous‑waste options. She described municipal coordination across departments — health, DPW, building, schools and the library — as central to program delivery and said the city works with regional processors for biosolids and yard‑waste composting.
"What’s really scary to me is how much the cost of trash has gone up in the past few years. It's gone up 40%," Edinburgh said, citing collection, transportation and disposal increases. She told attendees the city sends trash to Wheelabrator North Andover, which she described as at full capacity, and observed that some communities must ship waste out of state when regional capacity is exhausted.
Edinburgh encouraged municipalities to leverage DEP resources, apply for RDP/SMRP funding and consider small pilots (for example, curbside organics) that lower barriers to participation. She also stressed leadership from elected officials and department heads to sustain programs and urged peer learning at the workshop’s breakout sessions.
The city presentation emphasized practical tools (curbside audits, reuse shops, repair cafes) and interdepartmental coordination as pathways to scale diversion while acknowledging that contract terms, commodity markets and processing capacity influence program costs and feasibility.
