Solving Portland, Maine’s Recycling Problem

Over seven weeks last summer, Wagner and his crew drove the streets of two Portland neighborhoods ahead of the trash trucks first to document the scene, and then again afterward to look for recyclable litter.

And they found plenty of it: 20,950 pieces of litter for every 1,000 households, or the equivalent of 3.74 tons of litter annually for every 1,000 households.

The results surprised even Wagner, who hopes his study could help persuade city officials to switch to larger, closed-top recycling bins.

“It’s one thing if you just drive by and observe (litter), but it’s another thing if you walk the route,” said Wagner, a professor at USM’s Department of Environmental Science and Policy and affiliated faculty at the Muskie School of Public Service. “And then what would happen is, as the winds picked up, they would blow that litter around. But it has to go somewhere, whether in another person’s backyard, into the bushes or into a storm drain.”