MAINE, USA — EDITOR'S NOTE: The video above aired on August 12, 2022.
If you’ve taken your bottles and cans to a local CLYNK recycling depot, you may have witnessed the depots are full or overflowing.
“Throughout the summer right now we’ve been struggling with volume levels that we have never seen in the 17 years that CLYNK has been around,” Dan Kiley, CLYNK's director of brand delivery, said.
Kiley says this increase has been primarily seen throughout the southern coast of Maine and in the lakes region. One factor that’s causing the overflow at CLYNK depots is heavy tourism seen in many areas of the state.
“It’s due to a number of factors," Kiley said. "One is the tourism. We are ‘vacationland.’ The other factor is we’ve seen about 50 redemption centers close in the last couple years that we didn’t anticipate continuing to happen ... The private redemption centers and CLYNK are part of what makes the bottle bill work here in Maine. Maine has one of the highest levels of redemption in the country for states that do have bottle bills. And a lot of that is because the attitude of Mainers and the guests that come into the state.”
“We pick up multiple times a day but the volume is so great in some cases we can clean up a depot fairly well and by the same time the next day it looks like we weren’t there, which is not the case.” John Sabine, CLYNK's vice president of operations, said.
Sabine says steps are being taken to rectify the situation and we’ll likely see a decrease in volume by the fall.
In the meantime, CLYNK advises the following ways the public can help:
- If you can hold off on dropping off your recycling because your local CLYNK depot is full, it could help decrease the recent overflowing.
- Refrain from placing your bag outside of the depot, as it could lead to more doing the same.
- Limiting your drop-offs to three bags, allows more room for others to drop off their bags.
- Make sure bags are well-tied and under 20 pounds to make transportation easier and faster.
Businesses that regularly drop off a high quantity of recycles at a time can reach out to CLYNK to find out how to drop off recyclables at the factory directly.