When asked why the Town of Brookhaven is implementing a recycling rewards program and not a pay-as-you-throw system, officials say it’s largely due to the size of the town.

Executing an aggressive program that covers all of Suffolk’s largest town is never easy. It’s the same reason why Brookhaven customers dissatisfied with Cablevision can’t switch to Fios, unless they live in an incorporated village. The build out in Brookhaven will take so long and require so much manpower that surrounding towns need to be completed first.

But we need to reduce the amount of trash we generate. Nowhere is that goal more important than in a large town such as Brookhaven. And a pay-as-you-throw plan would accomplish that ultimate goal in ways a recycling rewards program never will.

A Stony Brook University study recently highlighted the success of PAYT programs on Long Island.

The following is a list of beefs I have with the town’s new rewards plan:

— How many people will redeem the points they earn through the Recyclebank program? A 2010 article on a Massachusetts website shows that only 1 percent of residents in the Town of Southbridge, where a Recyclebank program was implemented in 2007, are actually redeeming the coupons they earn.

— Are the rewards really all that special? Do we really want to reward folks for recycling by giving them Coca-Cola coupons? Yet that’s one of the rewards the Recyclebank site lists. Is that healthy? Wouldn’t that generate more trash?

— Are you really rewarding individual effort when the rewards are dished out per recycling district? In other words, I can be the king of recycling and my neighbor can avoid recycling all together and we’re back at square one. While I understand there’s no perfect way to monitor the results, that can be pretty discouraging for a do-gooder in a neighborhood of do-nothings.

— Finally, PAYT programs are simply better.

As the biggest town,  Brookhaven has plenty of legitimate excuses for not implementing a PAYT program. But it sure would be nice if the county’s largest town could be ahead of the curve on what’s important for the environmental health of our region.

• Our feel-good story of the past year was Building Hope for Long Island’s effort to build a new home for the Shaljian family of Miller Place. With the work now complete, we wish the organization success as it looks to help other families in need.

• I thought this might be the year when local lacrosse teams hit a small rough patch after so much dominance in recent years. Wow, was I wrong. Both the boys and girls teams at Shoreham-Wading River AND Mount Sinai are competing for county titles this week. And several area graduates helped their colleges capture collegiate titles this spring as well. Once again, SunLand is LacrosseLand.

Be sure to check out our coverage of the county title games Wednesday and Thursday.