PEMBROKE — September 9, 2026 — Pembroke’s recycling contamination rose to 24.3 percent from 21 percent in the town’s latest audit, a figure that carries straight through to household trash bills in fines and hauling costs. The Recycling and Sustainability Committee asked the Select Board for help restructuring itself, saying it is down to four members and struggling to hold a quorum.
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The audit was conducted June 22. Nicole Lydic of the Recycling and Sustainability Committee, who attended it on her own vacation time, told the board the contractor began weighing bagged recyclables separately partway through because the problem had become persistent. On the Wednesday route, bagged material alone came to 7.6 percent of contaminant weight.
Recyclables sealed inside a plastic bag are rejected in full, and plastic bags are Pembroke’s single largest contaminant. One 88-pound load contained rocks. Another held a hose with nozzles and connectors, weighing 157 pounds on a load that ran 48.8 percent contaminated. Syringes turned up, though the town offers free sharps disposal through the fire department.
The cost is not abstract. The town is fined for every rejected load and pays to transport it to a landfill or incinerator, with fuel costs rising underneath both.
“I work in the assessor’s office as my full time job and it is now exemption season. And this is a complaint I hear from a lot of our elderly who are applying for tax exemptions that they can’t even afford the $40 extra on this trash bill.” — Nicole Lydic
Lydic argued against the board’s previously floated idea of mailing stickers to households, on the grounds that the people least likely to open a trash bill are the people the message needs to reach. She proposed instead that the hauler tag offending bins directly, with a first warning and a second, using the educational provisions already written into the town’s contracts.
Town Manager William Chenard was blunt about why the number stings.
“I am really frustrated that so many of our costs we can’t control. We can’t control fuel costs, for example. We can control this.” — Town Manager William Chenard
The town holds a state grant that assigns it a Municipal Assistance Coordinator for 80 hours to read through contracts and identify what the town is already entitled to. Lydic said roughly three of those hours have been used, and that the coordinator’s territory has since been enlarged, which may thin the attention Pembroke receives. Member Steve Ciciotti asked whether the effect could be translated into dollars per household — what 10 percent contamination would save against staying where the town is — as a way of making the case publicly.
The committee’s own capacity is the constraint. It is chartered at seven members and has four, which is exactly its quorum. Member Dan Trabucco noted the committee was established by town meeting vote, so the board cannot shrink it or rewrite its 2017 mission statement on its own; that requires a town meeting article. The board settled on advertising the vacancies, reconciling the mission statement on the town website, and considering a five-member committee at a future town meeting.
