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Trash and Recycling by Town in Greater Portland, Maine: Who Pays Per Bag and Who Does Not
The first week in a new Maine town, someone tells you to buy the bags. You nod, then spend twenty minutes at Hannaford staring at a rack of colored trash bags trying to work out which one your town will actually pick up. Guess wrong and your trash sits at the curb while your neighbor's identical pile disappears.
That confusion is the whole story of trash in Greater Portland. There is no regional system. Each town made its own choice about how to charge you and what to hand you, so the rules change the moment you cross a town line. Here is how it actually works across the towns within 25 minutes of Portland, checked in July 2026 against town public works pages and ecomaine, so you know what to buy before you stand in the aisle.
The one thing that actually varies: how you pay
Strip away the details and every town falls into one of three buckets. Which bucket yours is in matters more than anything else, because it decides whether trash is a line you pay every time you take out the bin or a cost already buried in your property tax bill.
Pay-as-you-throw, or PAYT, means you buy special town-branded bags, and the price of the bag is the price of throwing the trash away. The more you toss, the more you pay, which is the point: PAYT towns are trying to push you toward recycling, which stays free. If your town is PAYT, only the official bag gets collected, and a bag from the next town over will not.
Cart-based collection means the town issues you a wheeled cart or barrel and the cost of emptying it is covered by your taxes. You do not buy anything at the store. You roll the cart to the curb and it gets emptied, no per-bag math.
Transfer-station or bring-it-yourself towns do not run curbside pickup at all. You either haul your own trash to the town facility or hire a private company to come get it. This is rarer, but it exists right inside Greater Portland.
The thing every town shares: ecomaine
Before the town-by-town differences, the one constant. Almost every community here sends its waste to the same place: ecomaine, the nonprofit, community-owned waste-to-energy and recycling operation on Blueberry Road in Portland. It serves more than 70 member communities. Your trash is burned there to generate electricity, and your recycling is sorted at its single-sort facility next door.
Single-sort, also called single-stream, is the part that makes recycling easy and consistent across town lines. Everything recyclable goes in one bin with no separating: cardboard, paper, cans, glass bottles, and the accepted plastics all go in together. Because the processing is the same everywhere in the region, the rules for what belongs in the bin are the same in Portland as in Gorham. That is the good news for anyone moving between towns, and it is covered in more detail in the recycling section below.
Town by town
The color of your bag and the shape of your bin change with your address. This is the current lay of the land.
Portland runs pay-as-you-throw. Trash goes out only in the city's purple bags, sold in 15-gallon and 30-gallon sizes at grocery and hardware stores around the city, and the collection is weekly. Recycling is separate and free, in a blue bin the city empties on your collection day. Bag prices are set by the city and have risen over the years, so confirm the current figure with Portland Public Works rather than trusting an old number online. Purple is the tell: if it is not a city purple bag, it does not get picked up.
Falmouth is also pay-as-you-throw, but the bag is yellow, not purple. Falmouth switched to automated collection in 2023, so the town issues wheeled carts that a mechanical arm on the truck lifts and empties, and your trash goes inside the town's yellow bags within that cart. Yellow Falmouth bags are sold at Hannaford, Shaw's, Town Landing Market, and Rosemont Market, among others. Recycling is single-stream to ecomaine, no bag required.
Cumberland uses pay-as-you-throw with a green town bag, placed inside a Casella-provided trash cart. Recycling is collected the same day in a separate Casella cart. Carts have to be curbside by 7 a.m. on collection day and no earlier than 6 p.m. the night before.
Yarmouth went pay-as-you-throw in recent years and uses its own town bags for curbside pickup, with 15-gallon and 30-gallon sizes running a little over a dollar and around two dollars respectively at last posting. Yarmouth also runs a well-regarded Transfer and Recycling Center on Main Street for anything the curb will not take. Bags are sold at Hannaford and local hardware and grocery stores in and around town.
North Yarmouth rounds out the bag-color map with orange pay-as-you-throw bags for its curbside collection.
South Portland does not make you buy bags. The city issues every eligible household two barrels, green for trash and blue for recycling, and collection is weekly through Casella, hauled to ecomaine. The cost lives in your taxes, not at the register. South Portland also runs an opt-in curbside food-waste program for residents who want to compost.
Scarborough just changed hands. As of July 1, 2026, the town replaced Casella with Garbage to Garden as its curbside trash and recycling hauler, using automated carts, and added curbside composting as an opt-in service. If you moved to Scarborough before this summer, the truck and the rules are new. Collection is cart-based, covered by taxes, not by bags.
Westbrook is cart-based and automated. The city issues two color-coded toters, one for household refuse and one for recycling, and both need to be curbside by 7 a.m. on your pickup day. No bags to buy.
Gorham contracts curbside trash and recycling through Casella for homes and small apartment buildings of three units or fewer, with the trash going to ecomaine. It is cart-based, and Gorham points residents to Casella's collection app for schedules, reminders, and disposal questions.
Cape Elizabeth is the outlier that surprises new arrivals: the town runs no municipal curbside collection at all. You take your household trash and recycling to the Cape Elizabeth Recycling Center on Dennison Drive, off Spurwink Avenue, or you hire a private hauler to come to your house. Non-recyclable trash from the center still goes to ecomaine to be burned for energy, and certain items carry a disposal fee at the gate.
Windham provides curbside trash and recycling collection through its public works department; confirm your bin setup and day when you set up service, as the town sits at the outer edge of the ecomaine region.
| Town | How you pay | What you use |
|---|---|---|
| Portland | Pay-as-you-throw | Purple city bags, blue recycling bin |
| Falmouth | Pay-as-you-throw | Yellow town bags in an automated cart |
| Cumberland | Pay-as-you-throw | Green town bags in a Casella cart |
| Yarmouth | Pay-as-you-throw | Town bags, plus a transfer station |
| North Yarmouth | Pay-as-you-throw | Orange town bags |
| South Portland | In your taxes | Green and blue town barrels |
| Scarborough | In your taxes | Automated carts (new hauler July 2026) |
| Westbrook | In your taxes | Two color-coded city toters |
| Gorham | In your taxes | Casella carts |
| Cape Elizabeth | No curbside | Recycling Center or a private hauler |
What actually goes in the recycling bin
Because the whole region feeds ecomaine's single-sort plant, the recycling rules travel with you from town to town. The short version: recycle clean cardboard and paper, cans and metal, glass bottles and jars, and plastics marked for recycling. Everything empty, clean, and dry, and loose in the bin, not bagged.
The mistakes are also uniform, and they are the reason a load gets rejected. Plastic bags and film are the biggest one; they tangle the sorting machinery, so grocery bags and bubble wrap go back to the store drop-off, never in your curbside bin. Anything stringy, like garden hoses, holiday lights, and cords, jams the sorter the same way. Food-soiled containers, greasy pizza boxes, and anything you are not sure about are better left out, because wishful recycling contaminates the good stuff around it. When you genuinely do not know, ecomaine keeps a searchable tool called the Recyclopedia that answers where a specific item goes.
Why this belongs in your town comparison
Trash is a small monthly cost, but it is a real one, and it points in a direction most relocation math misses. In a pay-as-you-throw town like Portland or Falmouth, waste is a variable you control and pay for at the curb. In a cart-based town like South Portland or Westbrook, it is bundled into the taxes you already owe. Neither is automatically cheaper; a heavy household in a cart town may come out ahead, while a light one in a PAYT town pays almost nothing. What matters is knowing which model you are buying into before you sign a lease or close on a house.
It is the same lesson as the tax map: the sticker number lies until you know the mechanism. We break the recurring numbers down in the Portland, Maine cost of living guide and the town-by-town property taxes by town comparison, and the full first-month checklist lives in moving to Portland, Maine. If Falmouth is on your list specifically, moving to Falmouth, Maine covers what that town runs differently. And the day you need to lose something too big or too toxic for the bin, a mattress, an old fridge, a can of paint, getting rid of big and hazardous stuff follows a completely separate map.
FAQ
Which Greater Portland towns use pay-as-you-throw trash bags?
As of 2026, Portland (purple bags), Falmouth (yellow), Cumberland (green), Yarmouth, and North Yarmouth (orange) run pay-as-you-throw, where you buy official town bags and the bag price covers disposal. South Portland, Scarborough, Westbrook, and Gorham are cart-based, with the cost folded into property taxes. Cape Elizabeth has no municipal curbside pickup at all.
Can I use another town's trash bags?
No. Pay-as-you-throw bags are town-specific, and each town's crews collect only their own official bag, identified by color and printing. A Portland purple bag will not be picked up in Falmouth, and a Falmouth yellow bag will not be picked up in Portland. Buy the bag for the town you actually live in.
Where does Greater Portland's trash and recycling go?
Almost all of it goes to ecomaine, a nonprofit, community-owned facility on Blueberry Road in Portland that serves more than 70 member communities. Trash is burned to generate electricity at its waste-to-energy plant, and recycling is sorted at its single-sort facility. Because the region shares one processor, the recycling rules are consistent across town lines.
Do I have to sort my recycling in Maine?
No. Greater Portland uses single-sort, also called single-stream, recycling through ecomaine, so all accepted materials go into one bin with no separating. Keep everything empty, clean, dry, and loose rather than bagged. The main things to leave out are plastic bags and film, anything stringy like hoses or cords, and food-soiled containers.
Does Cape Elizabeth have curbside trash pickup?
No. Cape Elizabeth does not run municipal curbside collection. Residents take household trash and recycling to the Cape Elizabeth Recycling Center on Dennison Drive, off Spurwink Avenue, or contract with a private hauler for home pickup. Some items carry a disposal fee, and the town's non-recyclable trash still goes to ecomaine.
What changed with trash collection in Scarborough in 2026?
On July 1, 2026, Scarborough switched its curbside hauler from Casella to Garbage to Garden. The town uses automated carts emptied by a mechanical arm, and it added curbside composting as an opt-in service. Collection remains cart-based and funded through taxes, so residents do not buy bags.
Is pay-as-you-throw more expensive than a cart town?
Not necessarily. Pay-as-you-throw ties your cost to how much you throw away, so a light-waste household can spend very little, while a heavy one pays more per week. Cart-based towns bundle a flat cost into property taxes regardless of volume. Which is cheaper depends on your household, so the useful question is which model your town uses, not which is universally better.
Before you buy the bags
The move that saves you a wasted week is simple: find out which of the three buckets your town is in before you need to take out the trash. If it is pay-as-you-throw, learn the bag color and where it is sold. If it is cart-based, ask when your carts arrive and which day is yours. If it is Cape Elizabeth, plan for the Recycling Center or line up a hauler. Get that sorted and one of the quietly annoying parts of moving becomes a non-event. When you are ready to think past the trash, moving to Portland, Maine walks through the rest of what changes the day you become a Mainer.