Williston Park officials are looking to implement “single-stream” recycling to simplify pickups for residents and village workers.
The village is negotiating a contract with Omni Recycling of Westbury to let village trucks bring mixed paper, glass, metal and plastic recyclables to Omni’s facility and let the company separate them later, Mayor Paul Ehrbar said.
The village would pay a fee to Omni, which already processes its pre-sorted recyclables, but residents would only have to put all their recycling out for pickup once a week, Ehrbar said.
“Hopefully [it will] encourage more recycling — that’s the end goal — and also make the pickups a lot easier and more convenient,” Ehrbar said after Monday’s Board of Trustees meeting.
Village workers currently pick up metal, plastic and glass recycling one week and paper the next to be dumped at Omni’s Westbury facility, Ehrbar said. The village currently gets $5 for each ton of recyclables it delivers, but Omni would charge a fee to let village trucks drop off mixed material, Ehrbar said.
Village officials are working toward a $20-per-ton fee, but negotiations are still in progress, Ehrbar said.
Under a single-stream system, crews would pick up all kinds of recyclables on the same day each week and drop them in Westbury, Ehrbar said. Omni workers would then take them to be sorted at a separate facility in Brookhaven, village officials said during Monday’s meeting.
Village officials have been discussing single-stream recycling for the past several months. There is no timeline for implementing the new system because the village and Omni are still finalizing their contract, Ehrbar said.
“It’s still a work in progress,” he said.
Town of Oyster Bay officials announced plans earlier this month to switch to a single-stream recycling system, which they say will generate more than $300,000 in revenue.
The Town of Brookhaven collected 25 percent more recyclables in 2014 than the prior year after changing to single-stream collection, a 2015 Stony Brook University study found.
The towns of North Hempstead and Hempstead do not offer single-stream recycling, according to their websites.
An Omni Recycling representative could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
