Is bi-weekly garbage collection happening in USA?

[Helen Spiegelman]

Hi Greenyessers,

 

Our city (Vancouver BC) is switching from weekly to bi-weekly garbage collection, with weekly collection of "Green Bin" (yard trimmings and food scraps).

 

I was looking for other cities doing this, and came up with only Canadian ones. Maybe my search engine has refined my searches for me, excluding non-Canadian sites?

 

Is bi-weekly garbage well established in US cities?

 

H.

[Dreckmann, George]

Portland OR

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[Kate Bailey, Eco-Cycle]

There are a few cities in Washington state with biweekly trash collection as well. Renton has had it for 4 years, Bellingham has had it for about a decade and Olympia has it as well. I've heard Tacoma is in process of making the switch. And there are lots of cities watching to see how things go in Portland too. 

Hope that helps,  

Kate

Kate Bailey
Eco-Cycle International Program Developer
Eco-Cycle, Inc. | Boulder, CO USA
303.444.6634 x 105
www.ecocycle.org

[Helen Spiegelman]

Thanks, Kate.

 

Here in Vancouver the switch is linked to the introduction of separate collection of food scraps. Food scraps will get priority service with weekly pickup, as will recycling, while trash will wait 2 weeks.

 

Makes sense to me -- I can imagine that recycling will be cut back to fortnightly collection eventually -- no reason clean, sorted recyclables can't accumulate for a while between pickups.

 

I think the introduction of separate collection of food scraps will turn out to be the most significant and beneficial development in municipal waste management.

 

H.

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[Kerry Meydam]

I realize you asked about the USA, but I thought others might be interested in what is happening in Ontario as well. Here in Durham Region we have had bi-weekly garbage collection and weekly collection of food scraps (green bin) and recycling (blue box) for a few years.

 

Included with food scraps is paper towels, kleenex. Newspapers etc. go in the blue box for recycling.

 

Green bin use did increase when it went to weekly, but I believe it is still the area where we have the least compliance so need to do the most work to engage the public. We give them tips, such as for food scraps, you can store them in a zip-lock bag in the freezer if you have room, until the evening before pick-up. No smell that way and no animals getting into the bin. We put leftover veggies, egg shells, etc. into our small indoor green bin temporarily until we bring it outside to our own backyard composter as it doesn't cause an odor. We put leftover meat/fish/bones into our freezer until it goes out to the outdoor green bin.

 

Our Region sells backyard composters at their waste facilities along with additional green bins (large & small) and blue boxes. Initial blue box and green bin are given to new residents free of charge, and you can bring in your old one for an exchange when needed. Additional bins or boxes are sold rather than free.

 

And still the Durham/York/Covanta incinerator is under construction. But we have not given up yet.

 

Please keep us updated on how the switch is received in Vancouver.

 

Kerry Meydam
Durham Environment Watch

[Helen Spiegelman]

Thanks for this on-the-ground report, Kerry.

 

There are huge opportunities waiting out there for innovators to come up with easy ways to make separate food scraps collection convenient and hassle free. Right now there is only one company (Bag to Earth, from Ontario) producing a paper food scraps collection bag for people to package the stuff from their kitchen. Compliance will improve when our culture invents solutions to make it easier.

 

H.

[Eric Lombardi]

Helen,

 

We need your help on this … in Portland they are reporting a huge increase in diapers being put in the recycling bin now that garbage is only every-other-week (EOW) pick up.  Yuck for MRF’s !!!

 

I suggest some kind of EPR take back program for the diapers that appears to be a major issue with EOW trash.

 

Thanks,

 

Eric

 

Eric Lombardi
Executive Director

Eco-Cycle, Inc. | Boulder, CO USA

www.ecocycle.org

[Richard Anthony]

you go Eric

EPR on Diapers, yes

and P and G runs a zero waste factory to make them

www.richardanthonyassociates.com 

 

[Helen Spiegelman]

You are totally right, Eric.

Municipal waste managers are in total denial on the reality of putrescible wastes in general (notably pet feces) but especially on diapers, where producers are selling products that are suited neither for biodegradation nor for recycling. Remember the efforts of the early 1990s by Knowaste and others to "recycle" diapers -- about as likely as "recycling" aseptic boxes, and as soon as people stopped talking about the issue it was dropped.

 

The municipal Green Bin programs have to come to grips with diapers: in? out? and be clear with people. Same with pet feces. Denial won't solve the problem. I welcome discussion of this.

 

H.

[Bagby, Jenny]

And to provide some more context.  Seattle does waste composition studies every four years and our last study on the residential sector, done in 2010, shows the following results for composition of disposed waste in the single family sector.  The SF sector has a recycling rate of 71%, we have curbside recycle, curbside organics (including food waste and compostable paper).  Food waste is still ramping up.  In 2012, 60,900 tons disposed for 163,000 SF households.

Top components, percent by weight.

Food                                                      28.8%

Animal Byproducts                          12.8%

Disposable Diapers                          9.9%

Compostable/Soiled Paper          7.3%

Mixed Paper                                      4.9%

 

Link to our waste comp studies

http://www.seattle.gov/util/Documents/Reports/SolidWasteReports/CompositionStudies/index.htm

Jenny Bagby

Principal Economist

Seattle Public Utilities

[Connie Cloak]

I'm glad to have these figures from Seattle including pet waste (I assume that's what's meant by 'animal byproducts'?)  I haven't been able to find any estimates on the amount of methane generated by pet waste in landfills, but am guessing it is significant.  Poop does not belong in landfills!  Personally I take all my dog's poop home with me (I take an empty peanut butter jar with me everywhere for this) and flush it down the sewer cleanout or when traveling, down a toilet.  I use compostable poop bags to pick it up and after emptying them into the sewer I bury them in a trench at the edge of my property.  It's not actually much hassle at all and I think most people could come up with a similarly workable solution.  Sanitary sewers are designed to handle poop and that's where it belongs.  Diapers are actually a harder problem IMHO and will get harder as the population ages (geriatric adults use bigger diapers and for longer than babies do). There are reusable diapers for adults as well as babies, but getting people to use them is apparently a hard sell! 
 

Connie Cloak

C2:Alternative Services

758 Pine St.

Santa Rosa CA 95404

Office: 707/568-3783

Fax: 707/575-6866

con...@c2alts.net

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From: "Bagby, Jenny" <Jenny...@seattle.gov>
To: GreenYes <gree...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thu, May 23, 2013 4:15:14 PM
Subject: RE: [GreenYes] Re: Is bi-weekly garbage collection happening in USA?

[Bob Wallace]

Hi Jenny,

 

What is the City of Seattle doing with glass collected now?  Our firm was part of a team for a project with King County several years ago where the glass that was collected in the County and sent to the regional MRFs was causing significant damage to the processing equipment and the glass shards were contaminating the recycled fibers causing a large percentage of rejection by the mills buying the fiber – please advise.

 

Best Regards,

Bob

Bob Wallace

Principal & VP of Client Solutions

WIH Resource Group

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[Gary Liss]

Rick and I did Oceanside ZW Plan last year that includes recommendation for the City to pursue EPR for diapers.

See: https://www.ci.oceanside.ca.us/civica/filebank/blobdload.asp?BlobID=30148

Zero Waste Brain Trust documents Every other week (EOW) RUBBISH collection in U.S. At: http://zwbraintrustdatabeta.wordpress.com/

Trash without putrescibles is NOT Garbage - it's Rubbish. Garbage requires weekly pickup; Rubbish does not.

Peter Anderson and I did report on Food Scraps Composting that highlighted EOW Rubbish collection as a key to affordable addition of food scraps to weekly organics collection programs. See: www.beyondrecycling.org.

Gary

Sent via BlackBerry from Gary Liss
916-652-7850, www.garyliss.com

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From: Richard Anthony <rican...@aol.com>

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Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 13:31:05 -0400 (EDT)

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[Blair Pollock]

Any indication from the diaper services if their business is increasing as one response? Seems like a great oppty!

[Mary Lou Van Deventer]

In the olden days, NCRA (the Northern California Recycling Association) wrote a very short bill called the Reuse Priority Act for the California legislature and found a sponsor to carry it.  All it said was that Reuse is a priority by itself, broken out from being embedded in Source Reduction.  The sponsor didn't think it was much of an issue, so he tagged on a tax benefit for equipment, which we hadn't wanted much (what is reuse equipment?), but we accepted it because he wanted it.  The bill ended up dying partly because it had a tax benefit in a bad fianancial year, but especially because the sponsor pulled out when he discovered he had recycling investments and therefore a conflict of interest because of the tax benefit, and for various reasons including exhaustion, we didn't want to pursue finding another sponsor.  In California, Reuse is still part of Source Reduction.  

Along the way, we talked with legislators' aides who totally dug in their heels at the idea of defining cloth diapers as "reusable" in a bill that had tax benefits  The reason was that a couple of years earlier they had been subjected to swarms of Proctor and Gamble diaper lobbyists, and they never wanted to see those lobbyists again.  Therefore cloth diapers couldn't be called "reusable"  for the purposes of the Act.  

Best of luck to all and sundry who want to make the political system follow the dictates or even suggestions of common sense.  

Aunty Entropy 

[Gary Liss]

Every other week.

Gary

Sent via BlackBerry from Gary Liss
916-652-7850, www.garyliss.com

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From: Penny Sidoli <psi...@yahoo.com>

Sender: gree...@googlegroups.com

Date: Wed, 29 May 2013 21:26:54 -0700 (PDT)

To: <gree...@googlegroups.com>

Cc: GreenYes<Gree...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: [GreenYes] Re: Is bi-weekly garbage collection happening in USA?

Is bi-weekly twice a week or twice a month?  In my city, Santa Barbara, we have three bins, landfill-recycle-yard trimmings.  Only restaurants have a food scrap bin in addition.  It is shocking how many do not fill their recycle bins. Part of the reason is confusion about what can & cannot go into the recycle bin. At events we are seeing 3 bin arrangements for landfill-recycle-food scraps.

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