Abate wants to improve the borough's 2005 recycling rate of about 18 percent of its solid waste - well below the statewide average of 33 percent - and he believes he has found the way to do it.
Under a one-year pilot program that started in mid-April, Clayton residents who recycle can earn as much as $25 a month in coupons that can be redeemed at local businesses.
Under the program, Clayton collected nearly 63 tons of recyclables in April, compared with an average of 50 tons a month before the start of the program.
"This is a much better approach than snooping through people's trash to see if they are recycling," said Abate, 59, a retired social studies teacher and the head of Clayton's environmental commission.
Clayton is the first municipality in the state to join forces with Philadelphia company RecycleBank, which splits the saving from recycling with municipalities.
"We pay RecycleBank 50 percent of what our landfill savings would be," Abate said. "If, for example, we saved 100 tons from going to the landfill, that figure would be divided by half and multiplied by $73, which is the fee we pay for each ton sent to the landfill."
Even by paying RecycleBank, Abate thinks the new recycling effort saves the borough a lot of money.
"If we can recycle 1,000 more tons a year instead of throwing it in the trash, we can save almost $73,000 in taxpayer dollars" in landfill costs, said Abate, who saw early efforts of RecycleBank in Philadelphia and thought the plan could work for a small municipality, as well.
In 2005, Clayton spent about $260,000 to dump its trash at the county landfill and/or incinerator.
