New London — It has been two years since the Board of Education approved a districtwide recycling policy, and there now appears to be some movement toward better management and separation of waste.

Miguel Gautier, the school district’s facilities manager, admits some logistical issues have hampered progress but said Friday that the school system has several initiatives in the works.

The city will be buying laundry basket-style bins for cardboard that will replace dumpsters this summer and make it less likely recyclables and normal waste is mixed — which has happened in the past.

The school district by next year plans to do away with the disposable foam-type lunch trays in favor of plastic.

For that to happen, however, the school will need to fix dishwashers, which haven’t been used in years, or buy and install new ones.

School officials are even exploring the possibility of supplying the school district’s food waste to a piggery in Quaker Hill.

School board member Mirna Martinez said the idea for the school board’s policy came after a visit with her son to the Winthrop STEM Elementary School, where she found no noticeable recycling bins or plan in place.

In the months since the policy was passed, she said, she and others have been frustrated by the lack of implementation.

The board’s policy, passed July 1, 2014, states the school system is to implement “recycling in every classroom, staff room, administrative areas, cafeterias, snack bars, kitchens and on school grounds.”

“For two years this has been a struggle,” Martinez said.

She estimates the city, along with becoming more environmentally friendly and providing an educational tool for students, potentially could save $90,000 a year if the recycling movement spreads into the community.

Gautier admitted that the recycling program is not running 100 percent but that the school district has made strides. Recycling bins are made available to every classrooms and other areas.

The cafeteria remains a logistical stumbling block, he said.

Smaller recyclables are stored in 90-gallon plastic bins that were only purchased by the city about six months ago, Gautier said.

The reason for the delay from the city is unclear, he said.

In the past, Gautier said, there has been commingling of garbage and recyclables at times when other dumpsters were full, and there was no other available space to dump.

Any recycling container “contaminated” with normal garbage is heaped in with the normal waste stream, according to Public Works Superintendent William Watkins.

Watkins said it is a misconception, however, that the city has been dumping bins full of recyclables from the schools in with the regular waste stream.

Behind the school certain dumpsters, used mostly for larger cardboard, can only be lifted by the rear-lifter garbage trucks.

The regular garbage trucks, and not the recycling trucks, are used solely for the purpose of lifting when those bins are full.

On other occasions, he said, workers hand-pick the cardboard to throw in with the regular recycling trucks.

When the dumpsters are replaced with the laundry basket bins, he said the cardboard can more easily be moved to the recycling trucks.

The city generates between 800 and 1,200 tons of waste a month and, along with transportations costs, pays about $58 a ton to get rid of it at the incinerator in Preston.

Watkins said the city generates anywhere between 160 and 200 tons of recyclable material per month.

Recyclables are hauled to Willimantic Waster Paper in Willimantic, where the city receives $5 per ton in revenue.

Savings, he said, could be $63 for every ton diverted from the incinerator to the recycling plant.

The recycling initiative, alongside a host of maintenance-related issues, has been a topic of discussion at recent School Building and Maintenance Committee meetings.

Committee Chairman John Satti on Friday welcomed John Millaras, who — with his brother Thomas Millaras — operates a fourth-generation piggery in the Quaker Hill section of Waterford.

If the school district could manage to separate food waste in its cafeterias, John Millaras said that waste could be used to feed his pigs.

The Millaras brothers have anywhere between 400 and 700 pigs at any given time and operate a food-waste removal business.

The farm currently has Shop-Rite in New London, Pfizer and Mohegan Sun as customers.

Millaras would supply 55-gallon barrels to be filled with waste and picked up on a regular basis.

Mohegan Sun, he said, generates between 15 and 20 drums a day.

The farm then uses a steam treatment to cook or sterilize the food waste before it is fed to the pigs.

“This is definitely one of the best ways to recycle food waste,” Millaras said.

Public Works Director Brian Sear said the city is working with a private consultant paid by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to boost its recycling efforts.

“The bottom line is the efforts at the schools is helping to increase our recycling rate,” Sear said.

g.smith@theday.com