Category Archives: Waste Management

City of Peoria, Peoria Disposal Company, Village of Peoria Heights, Waste Management

PDC’s proposed recycling component improves, but still falls short

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On the council’s agenda for next Tuesday, October 13, is a recommendation from the Public Works Department to accept Peoria Disposal Company’s (PDC) bid of $5 million annually to collect solid waste, lawn waste, and recycling for the next five years. I did some analysis of the plan last month, but now I’d like to revisit the recycling portion.

First, there has been a new development. According to the most recent council communication, alley collection of recycling will be restored and protected:

If a customer currently places their refuse and landscape waste in their alley for collection then recyclables will be collected from the alley. If a customer currently places their refuse and landscape waste at the curb for collection then recyclables will be collected from the curb. Any changes in set out location will need to be approved in writing by the City during this agreement.

That’s great news! It will reverse a unilateral change in “set out location” (as they call it) by Waste Management, and is a big victory for older neighborhoods.

However, I think it might be helpful at this point to ask what the goal is in offering recycling collection. I’m not sure what it is, but I can tell you what it is not: it’s not to incentivize recycling. There are a couple of big disincentives to participating:

  1. Deposit of $50 for a 96-gallon Toter — Why is Toter rental necessary? It’s not. Consider the fact that you needn’t rent a Toter for refuse, nor do you need to rent a Toter for lawn waste. This means (a) they are capable of accommodating different kinds of waste containers, and (b) they are capable of distinguishing between one kind of waste and another. For the sake of argument, let’s presume that there is some justifiable need for a Toter — why does it need to be supplied by PDC? Why couldn’t a resident use a Toter he or she purchased at the store? Does PDC have Toter manufacture a special, proprietary design for PDC? There doesn’t appear to be any believable reason why a Toter must be rented to participate in recycling. It looks like an arbitrary requirement intended to disincentivize participation.
  2. Infrequency of collection (only once a month) — Given that your capacity is limited to one 96-gallon Toter for a month, how much recycling will you be able to do? Some, to be sure. But, if you have a large family (I have a family of five, for instance), and you’re serious about recycling (like my wife is), you’ll find that most of the waste coming out of your home is recyclable. In fact, we only have one garbage can of regular refuse each week, but fill up a 64-gallon Toter plus one or two smaller bins every other week. If collection goes to once a month, we’ll easily have more recycling than a 96-gallon Toter can hold. What are we supposed to do? Rent a second Toter, so now we’re up to a $100 fee to participate? Or just throw half our recyclables in the garbage, which has no restrictions? Either way, it’s fair to say there’s a pretty good incentive not to recycle.

Local environmental activist David Pittman recently sent me this information:

Peoria Heights has achieved a 50% participation rate with their curbside bi weekly residential recycling program within 6 months. People usually want to recycle if it is easy and convenient and free. Normal is around 40%. Elgin is nearly 60%. Springfield about 40%.

I doubt we’re going to see participation rates that high under the proposed contract. But his comment got me thinking: Why not bid out the recycling separately? That’s how Peoria Heights does it. G & O Disposal takes care of their refuse while Eagle Enterprises takes care of their recycling.

If we bid it out separately, we might get more bids on the recycling portion than just PDC and Waste Management (WM). Perhaps a company that wouldn’t be able to handle all of Peoria’s waste hauling needs could handle just one portion, if you are now considering to start recycling check cheap skip bin hire Melbourne.

Here’s one thing I don’t want to hear when this is discussed Tuesday night: “We can’t afford any more than this.” It’s inevitable that someone (possibly everyone) will argue that the current proposal should be accepted because (a) it’s the cheapest and (b) it fulfills all the criteria they wanted. While that’s true as far as it goes, it’s worth noting that if PDC had suggested once-a-month pickup of lawn waste, the council likely wouldn’t have approved it due to the inconvenience factor. So it will be interesting to hear how much of a priority the council gives to recycling.

Some might protest that it is a priority, but that we simply can’t afford a robust recycling program right now, given the dire economic crisis we’re facing. I would point out that the dire economic crisis is not stopping the council from raising taxes and handing the proceeds over to a private developer so he can build a downtown hotel. I know I’m starting to sound like a one-string fiddle here, but facts are facts. As long as they continue to pursue and defend this non-essential and risky hotel scheme, I’m not buying any argument that says we “can’t afford” this or that. We can afford it, if it’s a high enough priority.

City of Peoria, Peoria Disposal Company, Waste Management

Public Works to recommend PDC for waste hauling contract

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On July 28 the city agreed to send out requests for proposals (RFPs) for a new garbage hauling contract (the current one expires at the end of the year). Only two companies submitted bids: Waste Management (the current hauler) and Peoria Disposal Company (PDC). According to a report released today from the Public Works Department:

In reviewing the responses it is clear PDC provided the best pricing in almost all categories and further discussion in this report will be based on our recommendation to award all service contracts covered by this RFP to the Peoria Disposal Company (PDC). Staff will be recommending the Alternate Proposal from PDC for consideration by City Council at the October 13, 2009 City Council meeting.

PDC’s “alternate proposal” is to provide exactly the same service we have plus citywide recycling collection, all for a $5 million flat rate. Specifically, the proposal would include these services:

  • Residential Refuse Collection & Disposal (as currently provided)
  • Landscape Waste Collection & Disposal (as currently provided)
  • Neighborhood drop boxes, tire disposal and dead animal service (as currently provided)
  • Condominium and City Building refuse collection (as currently provided)
  • Collection of Recyclables from curbside on a monthly basis for customers wishing to participate. A 95-gallon cart for single stream recyclables collection will be provided for a refundable deposit of $50. There would be no monthly cost for the service.

The good news is that we wouldn’t be losing any services we currently have, and we would finally get recycling collection as part of our base contract. The bad news is that recycling would only be picked up once a month, curbside only, and only from a PDC-provided wheeled cart.

For families that really get into it, recycling can account for 75% or more of their refuse. That’s going to really pile up over a month’s time. Granted, it won’t stink like garbage, but it will take more than a 95 gallon toter to hold it all. This seems less than ideal, which is why I never fail to find some dumpsters for rent near me and dispose responsibly.

There’s no reason recycling pickup couldn’t be accommodated in the alleys, especially since that’s where all the garbage and lawn waste collection is done. By requiring recycling to be curbside only, many in older neighborhoods would be precluded from even participating. Since those participating will have to use PDC-supplied 95-gallon bins, and since many older homes don’t have direct outdoor access from their garages/back yards to the front of their homes, the only way these neighbors could participate is by wheeling their bin down the alley to the side street, down the side street to the intersection, then down their own street, finally placing it in front of their house. Or, alternatively, they could wheel the 95-gallon toter through their house and down their front steps to the street. Kind of ridiculous, wouldn’t you say? There’s a reason why older neighborhoods have alleys. The city should insist that garbage haulers use them.

The PDC-provided wheeled cart is only bad in that it’s exclusive. If someone already owns a dedicated toter for recycling, they will have to plunk down another $50 (refundable though it may be) for this PDC-branded toter. It’s nice to have the toters available for use if you need one, but why force others to take one they don’t need? Are they going to tell us that they have a special, proprietary design to their toters and trucks such that only PDC toters are compatible? If we’re trying to encourage recycling, why do we want to add this entry cost? We’re not requiring everyone to fork over $50 for a toter for regular garbage.

According to the report from Public Works, PDC also provided the cost of providing this same service except that they would pick up recycling and landscape waste on an every-other-week basis. The cost of that solution is $6,186,664.27 ($1,186,664.27 more than the plan outlined above). I don’t understand why this costs so much more. Maybe it will be explained at the council meeting. It seems to me the more expensive plan actually requires fewer collection trips. Think about it:

$5M Plan   $6.1M Plan
4 landscape waste collections per month   2 landscape waste collections per month
+ 1 recycling collection per month + 2 recycling collections per month
= 5 total collections = 4 total collections

“Ah,” you say, “but landscape waste is only collected from the third Monday in March through the third Friday in December, whereas recycling is collected year-round!” Okay, let’s look at the whole year:

$5M Plan   $6.1M Plan
40 landscape waste collections per year   20 landscape waste collections per year
+ 12 recycling collections per year + 24 recycling collections per year
= 52 total collections = 44 total collections

Where is the added cost? Of course, this is probably a futile exercise, because my guess is most of the council members will not go for lawn waste pickup every other week anyway (the lawn waste bags start getting soggy after a while). But it does raise a fair question about how they came up with the amounts quoted.

Bottom line: The proposed contract is better than what we have now at a reasonable cost. The council should try to work out the flaws mentioned above while still keeping costs low.

City Council, City of Peoria, Waste Management

Talking trash

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The city’s solid waste removal contract with waste removal solutions for households expires at the end of this year. This contract has been in place since about 1992. Now, if you’re just an average person, you might think that the city had plenty of time to start the process of rebidding this contract. After all, they knew when it was due to expire, and they know how long it takes to negotiate contracts such as these, so logically they should have been able to work backwards from the deadline to determine a time line for the rebidding process.

But they didn’t do that. No, here it is June 2009, six months before the end of the contract, and they’re just starting the year-long process. Naturally, they are requesting an extension to the existing contract that has been in place for 17 years already to allow them extra time to negotiate a new contract. That request was on last week’s (June 23) agenda, but was deferred for a month.

Meanwhile, they managed to engage a consultant to get some advice on rebidding the contract. I don’t know exactly how city departments are allowed to spend their budget, but it seems to me that every other consultant that has been hired by the city had to be approved by the council; this consultant contract never came before the council. However, it must be no big deal because the council didn’t seem to care.

The consultant made a bunch of recommendations on how the city can lower the cost of waste removal. Of course, all those suggestions mean worse service for residents. For instance, they’re recommending that everyone be provided a 90-gallon tote, and that all other garbage containers be outlawed. You wouldn’t be able to buy your own tote, of course — you’d have to essentially rent it from the disposal company. And they want to do away with alley collection of garbage, even though that’s one of the reasons alleys exist, and many older neighborhoods were designed for garbage collection from the alleys, not from the curb.

To their credit, the city council has so far been pretty adamant about keeping the alley collection of garbage, but city staff is trying to convince them to change their minds. They want to big the contract with all-curbside pickup as an option so the council can see how must more expensive it is to include alley collection. There’s only one reason for splitting out these costs: to try to persuade change. One wonders why it’s more expensive to run a truck down an alley rather than a parallel street 130 feet away. Waste Management says their trucks are too big for our alleys (solution: use smaller trucks). City staff says the heavy trucks damage the alley surfaces (question: wouldn’t moving the trucks to the streets just move the damage to the streets as well? Or is this an admission that alleys are poorly maintained in the city?).

The consultant is also suggesting that the city limit or do away with picking up anything that doesn’t fit inside one of the recommended 90-gallon totes. So, whereas now you can throw away that old couch or cabinet (what they call “bulky waste”) — the consultant says that should stop, be reduced to just once or twice a year, or charged an extra fee, such as $10 or $15 per item.

The biggest issue, however, is going to be how to include universal recycling. There is a lot of popular support for alleyside/curbside recycling as part of the base contract. Currently, anyone who wants to recycle has to pay extra and are billed directly by the hauler. That means that a household like mine that recycles pays three times for garbage service: once on our property taxes, once on our water bill, and once directly to Waste Management. Most households are not willing to pay three times for garbage hauling, so they just throw all their recyclables away in the regular trash. In other words, our current system incentivizes people not to recycle. That needs to be changed.

However, that will cost more money. So the question becomes how to pay for such service. One idea is to do the opposite of what we’re doing now: make recycling pickup free, but charge a fee for regular garbage. The way they do this in Morton is by selling trash stickers. However, in a more urban area, there is concern that this might lead to more illegal dumping or other unsanitary conditions as some people attempt to avoid the fee. So another idea is to make all collections every-other week. Regular garbage would be picked up on odd weeks, and recycling would be picked up on even weeks, for instance.

One other change that has been recommended in order to save money is switching to a sticker system for yard waste. Right now, unlimited yard waste disposal is included in the base contract. The cost of that service could be offset or possibly covered completely by charging residents a fee per bag of yard waste. On the other hand, this would be yet another reduction in services city residents already enjoy and for which they already pay twice.

Who would have thought garbage could be so complicated?

City of Peoria, Waste Management

Peoria should incentivize recycling

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Recycle SymbolMy wife has been recycling things like newspapers, glass, and steel cans by taking them to public bins behind Kroger on Sterling or the old Festival Foods at Northpoint, or sometimes just handing the garbage to a junk removal company. But these places don’t take other recyclable items such as plastic, cardboard, phone books, or magazines. There was also a place downtown called Erlichman’s where you could drop off your phone books and magazines.

Being the good conservationist she is, my wife called Erlichman’s to find out if they or a junk removal Bakersfield service took cardboard and plastic. That’s when she found out that they had been bought out by Midland Davis Recycling, and they do take cardboard, but not plastic. That was the sort-of good news. The bad news is that they closed their Peoria store, leaving only Pekin (south of the jail) as a drop-off location.

Well, that’s a little far to drive to recycle. So, my wife called every other recycling place in Peoria, only to find out no one takes plastic, nor do they take cardboard from residents (although some would take cardboard from businesses).

So, as a last resort, she e-mailed Waste Management (WM), Peoria’s garbage service provider, with a list of questions about their recycling service. She asked what they recycle, and they responded that they recycle “all basic items.” Not helpful; she e-mailed a follow-up question to get a little more detail on what “basic items” meant. It turns out, WM recycles plastic, steel cans, newspaper, magazines, and phone books — even junk mail — but not cardboard. Ironically, the standard footer on their e-mails touted the benefits of recycling cardboard — something they don’t recycle here. When she asked why they don’t recycle cardboard, they said that was a decision made by the local drop-off point for recycling.

The e-mail also said that they pick up once a week. Not true. They pick up every other week.

It gets better: as many of you know, you have to pay extra for recycling in Peoria. Of course, garbage collection is paid for from two sources already: property taxes and the $6/month garbage fee that gets tacked on our water bills. But even with all that revenue, they’ll only dump your stuff in the landfill. If you want your stuff recycled, you have to pay an additional $3.25 per month for which they bill you directly on a quarerly basis.

If you didn’t know better, you’d think Peoria was actively trying to discourage people from recycling. Other communities make recycling the priority. For instance, in Morton, recycling is a basic service, but you pay extra for regular garbage pick-up by the canful. You have to buy stickers — kind of like a postage stamp (I like to think of it as mailing your garbage to the landfill).

That kind of system rewards recycling because there’s an incentive to reduce landfill waste. In Peoria, there is an incentive to put all your recyclable items in the landfill. Meanwhile, the solid waste landfill in Edwards is filling up. WM’s contract is up in 2009 — can it be renegotiated to incentivize recycling?