At 6.4 percent, Westbrook’s recycling rate is embarrassing. And that won’t change unless this city’s elected officials start showing some leadership on this issue.

By comparison, Portland, Falmouth, Windham and Gorham all have recycling rates above 30 percent. Those communities all have pay-per-bag recycling programs, which provides an financial incentive for residents to recycle.

Westbrook’s mayor and city councilors have been considering how the city could do more recycling and manage its trash disposal costs for nearly four years now. After all that time, the city has done nothing.

It needs to do something. Pay-per-bag programs are the best way to increase recycling rates, and if city councilors are unwilling to adopt such a program, they are obligated at least to pursue a voluntary curbside recycling program.

After 13 residents spent months researching the city’s options, city councilors recently voted against pursuing the recommendation of the committee – going to a pay-per-bag recycling program.

City councilors opted instead to consider pursuing one of the least aggressive options – spend about $300,000 on a voluntary recycling program. However, it remains to be seen whether the mayor and councilors will ultimately decide to include that money in the budget this year. Based on the city’s track record, the odds aren’t good.

Now, lest anyone accuse this newspaper of advocating to do too much too fast, let’s review some recent history. Chuluda is now in his fourth year as mayor. It was in his first year that he proposed the city convert to a pay-per-bag recycling program. The issue immediately became the most controversial in the budget. It was removed, as city councilors promised to consider the program in committee.

However, almost a year later, councilors had yet to take it up in committee. When they finally got to it, they put off a decision, deciding instead to seek more information. It was last September when a group of residents finally got together at the mayor’s prompting to do some research and come up with a recommendation for the city.

One of the things the committee discovered was that it wasn’t just Westbrook residents that weren’t recycling; City Hall, the Westbrook School Department and Westbrook Housing don’t have recycling programs either. That came as a surprise, not just because recycling has become commonplace in many homes and businesses but because city officials should be as conscious of the need to recycle as anyone.

“It’s just appalling,” the chairman of the recycling committee, Mike Miles, said in an interview this week. “It’s not like no one’s thought about this. City Hall has been gathering information on municipal recycling for four years.”

For all the debate at the recent council meeting over whether the recycling committee’s findings accurately portrayed the opinions of everyone on the committee and the costs of all the various options, the report made at least a couple of things clear – Westbrook’s recycling rate is abysmal, and the city has done little to change that.

The report also found that recycling programs with incentives, like pay-per-bag recycling, have the most impact on recycling rates. Nonetheless, a voluntary program like the one the city is considering would at least be a start. The city also needs to lead by example – start recycling at city hall and in the schools.

Brendan Moran, editor