Cape Elizabeth residents are now required to recycle at the transfer station, and failure to do so could yield a hefty fine.

The Cape Elizabeth Town Council unanimously mandated the ordinance at its recent Town Council meeting, forcing residents to recycle their goods and no longer throw recyclable materials in the town’s hopper.

Violations of the law could yield a fine no less than $200 and no greater than $3,000, Cape Town Manager Michael McGovern said. The fine is determined by number of offenses and how much non-recycled material was thrown into the hopper.

“The mandatory recycling for many folks is not going to make a difference because a lot of folks are already recycling,” McGovern said.

Cape residents at the town’s transfer station on Monday applauded the move.

“It’s fine with me,” said Cape resident Jane Snerson while recycling goods at the transfer station on Monday morning. “It needs to be done, otherwise we’re all going to rot.”

Erick Hagmann also said he believed the move was the right decision.

“Obviously, I recycle,” Hagmann said at the transfer station on Monday. “It’s a good thing and it’s a good move for the better.”

Transfer station attendants who already work there will be charged with enforcing the ordinance, McGovern said. The transfer station has two attendants, one full time and one part time. They are both on duty at the same time on Saturdays and Mondays.

They will be looking for repeat offenders, educating the public as to what can be placed into the hopper and what materials are recyclable, and alerting the town of violators, McGovern said.

“As has always been the case, if we see people throwing a bunch of newspapers in the hopper, we’re going to be reminding them they need to be recycled,” McGovern said. “My hope is we’d take down numbers of license plates, and if the same people are doing it over and over, we’d take action.”

Hagmann, however, said he wasn’t too sure if the ordinance could reasonably be enforced.

“I don’t know how it will be really enforced,” he said. “How are you going to know who threw what into the hopper.”

Items allowed in the hopper are food waste and personal waste, such as toiletries, said Mary Page, a transfer station attendant. Items not allowed are recyclable materials, such as cardboard boxes, most plastics and paper.

Discussion of mandating recycling came after the town’s recycling working group recommended it to the Town Council late last year.

Following a hearing Feb. 9 on the group’s recommendations, the council directed McGovern to include in his 2009-2010 budget proposal a Recycling Center staff person to help educate and assist users with recycling.

The person who would monitor what goes into the hopper at the recycling center and enforce recycling rules would be paid about $27,000.

The town, however, recently approved a municipal budget that was $500,000 less than last year and eliminated the town’s dispatch service and decided to not make the hire.

Residents at the Feb. 9 hearing questioned the hiring of a monitor.

“We didn’t feel at this time it was the right move to make,” McGovern said. “We are currently experiencing a hiring freeze.”

The town will spend $5,000 from its current budget to launch an education campaign that will include pamphlets and newspaper advertisements to alert residents of what can and cannot be recycled, McGovern said.

The recycling ordinance is also a move to save the town money.

McGovern pointed out that ecomaine, a nonprofit waste management company owned by 21 municipalities in southern Maine, charges $180 per ton for trash as opposed to $38 per ton for recycled material.

He said in the past year Cape Elizabeth’s recycling is up 10 percent while its trash disposal is down 10 percent.

Page said she supports the ordinance, but believed Cape residents were already doing a good job of recycling on their own. The ordinance, however, will be more important for educating residents about the benefits of recycling, she said.

“Here is a good place to start,” Page said. “People can take what they learn here and take it to their homes, to their kitchens. If they don’t know what can be recycled, then this is a point of educating. For example, you can dump your kitty litter in the hopper, but you can’t dump your litter boxes because they are recyclable. Most people are aware, but for those who aren’t, this is a good start.”