Paper police to get tougher at Recycling Center

Shelter Island is going to get a lot fussier about the mixed paper it accepts at the Recycling Center.

The Recycling Center’s Brian Sherman told the Town Board at s recent meeting that Islanders will have to be educated to keep plastics, soiled paper, metal and all other contaminants out of the mixed paper recycling stream. The reason, he said, is that the town is going to stop sending its mixed paper to Winter Brothers Waste Systems, which he said “wants $100,000” to handle it next year, and instead sell it to a paper mill on Staten Island.

Mr. Sherman said that residents should not be alarmed — or fear a new police state here — if their mixed waste is inspected when they bring it to the Recycling Center. “The paper mill is very fussy,” he said, and “all hell breaks loose” if it receives contaminants in the paper it buys.

“We will be changing things around a little” at the Recycling Center, he said, and some new procedures will be put in place. One of them will allow mixed paper and newspaper to be collected together.

He said employees “will be there looking at what goes in” to catch any contaminants. “We have found drapes, plastic, milk jugs” in the paper waste stream, he said. He noted that Shelter Island phone books have a plastic spiral binding that won’t be accepted by the mill.

The town has purchased a new baler as part of its makeover of the mixed paper collection and recycling process, Highway Superintendent Mark Ketcham said.

Town Supervisor Jim Dougherty praised Mr. Sherman for his work and called it “a big financial plus.”