As soon as he heard that Allenstown will end its mandatory curbside recycling program at the end of the month, resident Gary Bokum turned to his wife and said, “We won’t be stopping.”

Bokum and his wife have already planned to find a place in their home to collect their recyclables before they can bring them to the Allenstown Transfer Station each week.

“I absolutely plan to continue recycling,” Bokum said. “We think it’s the right thing to do. We shouldn’t be putting all that back into the environment. It’s all about our resources and the future of our state.”

The decision to drop curbside recycling was made to offset rising trash collection costs.

Casella Waste Systems currently collects Allenstown’s curbside trash and recycling. The company’s 10-year contract with the town will conclude at the end of the month and continue in a new three-year extension. However, due to the increased cost of waste disposal, the town decided to cut curbside recycling at last year’s Town Meeting.

Casella will collect all curbside recycling bins from residents on Monday, Aug. 26.

The town currently pays $134,000 per year for trash collection and recycling. With the new contract, it will pay $189,000 annually for just trash collection. Given the $55,000 increase, residents voted to drop recycling to keep taxes lower.

The town produces an average of 400 tons of recycling per year, according to Chad Pelissier, road agent for the Solid Waste and Highway departments. The costs of the collection trucks, drivers, fuel, and the processing of both recycled materials and trash have all gone up from when the past contract went into effect a decade ago.

“If people want to continue recycling, they can bring it to the transfer station, and we offer the same program at the transfer station,” Pelissier said. “They can bring it for free and it will then be processed.”

Anyone who lives on a town-owned road currently has curbside pickup, Pelissier said.

“A big challenge for us when customers decide to forego curbside recycling services is that residents tend to think that it just simply means that [materials] weren’t being recycled anyway,” said Jeff Weld, vice president of communications for Casella. “That’s absolutely not the case and could not be further from the truth. It’s really important for people to still have confidence in recycling programs, even though it’s not going to be picked up at their houses.”

Pelissier, who started the voluntary transfer station drop-off recycling service prior to the contract with Casella, said the town will move back to a similar model.

“I’ll continue to bring my recyclables and get rid of them because I believed in the program from the get-go, but I understand why the residents and the people on those boards and committees didn’t want to pay all that money for it,” Pelissier said.

Resident Bill Gover said that he is sad to see curbside pickup end and figures many residents, including himself, will throw away items that can be recycled.

“Now convenience says it’s easier to throw the recycling into the trash,” Gover said. “In all honesty, I’m probably not going to continue recycling. It’s a lot harder to do if it’s not picked up at the curb.”

Gover added that the transfer station’s hours make it difficult for people who work to drop anything off. The transfer station, located at 161 Granite St., is open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7 - 10 a.m. and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Despite the limitations of ending curbside pick-up, Pelissier encouraged others to make use of voluntary recycling.

“It’s one of those things whether they don’t have time or the resources or the ability, I can’t fault them for that because for a long time we helped them with all of that, all of those logistics and now we’re not able to,” Pelissier said.

Allenstown is not alone in having to weigh rising costs with the desire to continue recycling, according to Weld.

“We see municipalities grapple with this decision throughout the state,” Weld said. “It’s a challenge. It’s not just an Allentown problem. It’s an everybody problem.”

Both Hooksett and Franklin terminated mandatory curbside single-stream recycling in recent years, according to the New Hampshire Municipal Association.

Andrea Folosm of the Northeast Resource Recovery Association explained that New Hampshire does not have a material recovery facility where single-stream recycling can be sorted, contributing to the costs.

“All of that recycling has to be shipped out of state,” Folsom said. “If you do source-separated recycling, you can sell your recyclables and get back a revenue that can help defray the cost. If you do single-stream recycling, you don’t get a revenue. You are paying to get your recycling out.”

Many towns in New Hampshire have source-separated recycling at transfer stations, rather than single-stream collection, Folsom added.

Weld explained that, in general, laws help to stabilize recycling costs. Without a state recycling law, the onus is on municipalities, businesses, homeowners and renters.

“With a universal recycling law, you know you can count on the value of material coming in, so it stabilizes the pricing a little bit,” he said. “You can establish recycling facilities so it’s not all individualized, now you have a much larger volume of material.”

When recycling gets scaled back and recycled materials end up in landfills, landfill capacity then becomes strained, which adds to higher trash costs, Weld added. He questioned whether manufacturers should be incentivized to use recycled content in production, and if residents should also receive an incentive to recycle.

To make sure residents are up-to-date on the collection of their curbside recycling bins, the town plans to deliver flyers to resident’s properties next week. Information about the end of mandatory curbside recycling is also available at www.allenstownnh.gov.

Rachel Wachman can be reached at rwachman@cmonitor.com.