By Carol Britton Meyer

Public meetings will be held in the new year to talk about how waste and recycling are currently handled in Hull and possible alternatives for the future, including municipal trash pickup.

“We want to find out what the town wants and how much it would cost,” Public Health Director Rachel Gerold told the select board Wednesday night.

She has already had discussions with DPW Director Chris Gardner and South Shore Recycling Cooperative Executive Director Claire Galkowski to float ideas, but this is the very beginning of the process – with many factors to be considered, including widespread public input.

Options could include municipal trash collection, creation of a transfer/recycling station – which could be cost-prohibitive and impractical, as many of the states and countries that formerly accepted municipal trash no do so – composting programs to reduce the amount of food waste, or maintaining the status quo of the two private trash haulers currently serving between 1,500 and 2,000 of the town’s 3,500 single-family and 45-50 two-family households – at a cost of between $48 and $70 a month.

“A large number of people aren’t using curbside pickup services because they have other means to dispose of their trash and recycling,” Gerold said. “We’ve heard that some people [combine] theirs with a neighbor’s or bring it to work, and that some summer residents bring theirs to the towns they live in.”

Another option is the possibility of some Hull residents participating in Cohasset’s pilot recycling and transfer facility program – beginning soon – which will allow a limited number of non-Cohasset residents to use the recycling transfer station for a $300-a-year charge, not including the cost of the trash bags.

Select board member Greg Grey asked Gerold to provide statistics about how other towns roughly the size of Hull operate their municipal trash collection services and the associated costs.

“We’ve had conversations about this in the past, and in the end it would have been very costly, so the idea didn’t go any further,” he said.

The SSRC “is here to help with any efforts the town wants to pursue,” said Galkowski, who participated in the conversation via Zoom.

In other business

Town Manager Jennifer Constable reminded citizens to check the town’s website for information about the winter parking ban that took effect this month, current disruptions in ferry service, and other news.

She also noted that the recently board-approved committee handbook is “a great step forward and a great resource.”

Constable also described a recent incident at an unnamed board meeting during which a resident “physically approached the board and took things from board members. This is not allowed,” she said. “If we have to provide monitoring at meetings for public safety, we’ll be doing that. People should be respectful of the work our boards and committees are doing. This kind of [behavior] is disruptive and disconcerting. We want to be sure our volunteers are safe.”

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