Like every other household in Renton, our home has been experimenting to get a good recycling arrangement. We've settled on two 10 gallon cans in our kitchen, along with a 30 gallon garbage can.



We find that we need to empty the compost most frequently, usually to avoid getting any smell. It is typically 3/4 full when it goes out to the yard waste toter. It uses 10 gallon compostable bags available from Safeway, Costco, and many other locations. The Landfill can and the recycling can get emptied about every three or four days. We have four full-time in our household, but a daytime population of twice that as our adult children and their friends often socialize here.

The outdoor toters will hold about two hundred and forty gallons of recycling, compost, and landfill materials, so storing refuse for two weeks has not been a problem for us. I'm thinking of trying to reduce the landfill toter from the 64 gallon size to a 32 gallon size. I know I could do it if I had a compacter.

The 30 gallon can indoors seems daunting, but considering it holds all manner of paper cardboard, cans, bottles, cartons, etc, anything smaller has to go out to many times.

I think overall we all like the changes over our old system. The best part is the mixed recycling and the wheeled toters. It's kind of a break for us only having to take the whole shooting match down to the street every two weeks instead of every week, as we have a long driveway.

This works for us. I know others are still working on their details. And I keep hearing that there are scattered places around town where people still are missing toters. If this is still the case, contact Waste Management or the City of Renton solid waste department, which you can find on www.rentonwa.gov.

ALL CAPS AND LIDS BELONG IN THE GARBAGE.

I looked into this. Here is the statement from Waste Management:
_________________________

Caps and lids are not made from recyclable material. Please put them in the garbage.

Caps and lids contaminate other recyclables, including bales of plastic and paper and loads of glass. Manufacturers who want recycled plastic bottles and recycled glass to make recycled products do not want caps and lids. Not only do the caps and lids eventually become garbage, but they also increase the cost of sorting and decrease the value of sorted recyclables.

Remember to remove caps and lids and throw them in the garbage!

____________________________________

This does not apply to the steel discs that your can opener cuts from the tops of your steel cans, but all other lids need to go in the trash.

Cathy tells me she was sitting on our couch when she heard our neighbors freshly-emptied recycling bin taking itself for a drive down the street in front of our house today. The wind propelled the wheeled bin onto the hill on Harrington Place, through the intersection with NE 23rd, down the next block, and across NE 23rd Place before it came to rest against another curb.

Cathy retrieved the bin and brought it back to our neighbors house.

It's probably a good idea to take an indelible pen and write your address on these new bins. Also, we'll have to remind waste management to leave them parked in secure locations after they've been emptied.

Photos of some wind-powered vehicles...

I received a great suggestion from a Renton citizen to post the links to the garbage collection schedules:

_____________________________
To: Randy Corman <rcorman@rentonwa.gov>
Subject: Garbage pickup
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2009 20:17:49 -0800

Randy, you might want to put some information on the bi-weekly garbage pickup on
your blog page.

About 1/2 of my neighbor have no idea it already started and it's not get to be
picked up this week. I couldn't find the information anywhere until today on
the city's homepage. That calender wasn't included in any of the mailing
regarding the changeover.

Regards,

________________________________________

Here is the information the citizen is looking for. In case you lose this link, I did a Google search on Waste Management Renton Schedule which brought this right up.

Note that the yard waste/kitchen compost bin goes out every week, while the blue recycling bin and the green garbage bin go out every two weeks.


Here is the page with the links to the schedules. Look for your are of Renton, and then click on that schedule.

And here is some more general information about the new collection protocol.

Thanks for the great suggestion to post this!

We were notified by our hauler, waste management, that they expect to catch up on garbage collection this week. So put your garbage out on your regular day, including the garbage saved from the weeks the haulers missed.

( Click Here to read Waste Management's email to the City on this topic )

For seven blissful years we've enjoyed having steady garbage pick-up rates, and one of the lowest rates in the Seattle area. (See the rate chart below)

Unfortunately, our nice deal with Waste Management is expiring, and garbage haulers are pushing on us hard to get the rates back up to market levels.

Renton has responded by looking at ways we might mitigate the rate increases through increased recycling efforts, and less frequent pick-up service of some waste streams. All of us on council are concerned about rates; but we have had a variety of different thoughts about how to deal with them.There are many facets to the debate (rates, frequency, fairness, safety, health issues, environmental issues), and many of us on council have revealed a fair amount of passion on the issue at one time or another.

After much debate, brainstorming, and gnashing of teeth, we are very close to reaching a decision point.

The Renton Reporter ran a story on the topic in the last edition. Click here for the article.

As the story explains, "The new rates will vary among residences. But for the largest single residential category – known as one-can service – the monthly rate will go from $13.44 a month to $18.41 a month."

It's important to understand that along with this 5 dollar rate increase, your single-can service is only going to get picked up once every two weeks. To avoid a home trash crisis (and be a good steward), you will need to put all of your organic trash into the "expanded yard waste" toter that will be supplied to you. I call it expanded, because it will now be the correct place to put food scraps, and cardboard and paper that is tainted by food. So your spoiled food, paper plates, cheesy pizza boxes, your Chinese food boxes, and your paper meat packaging would go in this toter (along with your yard clippings, old flowers, and other greenery).

A third toter will be supplied for collecting all the remainder of your recycling (clean paper, cardboard, cans, bottles, plastics), and in a simplification, none of this will have to be sorted any more.

All of this recycling will not leave too much stuff that will have to go into the traditional garbage stream. Hence, city experts believe this should make it possible for most single can homes to move to the 35 gallon toter that is picked up every two weeks.

The five dollar increase will be noticeable however, and there appears to be nothing we can do about it. If you look at the chart below, you can see this still keeps us much cheaper than many other jurisdictions.

Unfortunately, the rates are also going up for two-can users, commercial users, and min-can users. Citizens who are mini-can users will see a large percentage increase in their bill under the contract, as the cost for their service is just not much different than the cost of the next-size-up toter. We could think about subsidizing this further, but then it shifts costs upward on the other users who are already feeling a pinch.

Lastly, we had to decide between a seven year fixed-rate contract at an even higher rate, or to agree to a formula for rate increases over the life of the contract. (We had this choice seven years ago, and chose the seven-year fixed-rate.)

This time, the fixed rate is much too high, because it is so speculative given inflation and oil-price worries. The garbage haulers want a lot of money up front if they are going to take all the risk in future years, given the state of the economy.

City staff have tried to mitigate future rate increases, by creating some ways we can keep the rates down. One way we can do this is by diverting our waste streams into recycling. The new contract, the hauler wil actually set our rates by the actual tonnage transported to the transfer station. If this tonnage is reduced, our year-over-year rates will be credited by this savings. The numbers get complicated, but the bottom line is that if you put one hundred pounds of rubbish into recycling instead of the trash, that 100 pounds of rubbish will save Renton rate-payers about (100 pounds) X 75 (dollars/ton) /(2000 pounds/ton) = $3.75. This $3.75, along with the savings from all the other households, could be significant in helping off-set inflationary costs of fuel and labor in our contract...and will help us minimize future-year rate increases.

There are no perfect answers, and I'm sorry we have to see a rate increase, but there are a few pieces of good news. Everyone will get wheeled toters form Waste Management, with attached lids, which will make your cans and neighborhood more orderly. And the extra recycling, which is included in the cost of the program, is the environmentally sound thing to do.

As always, please feel free to leave your comments.




Click here for Seattle Times story about local garbage rates

Click here to see how some local families reduced their garbage and increased their recycling.

Click here to see the final report from the garbage pilot program conducted last spring.

...now that I'm an adult, she tells me how I should run the municipal garbage program. :-)

Seriously, my sweet Mom lives in a pretty, newer house in Livermore California; she was recently asked to begin putting food waste in her yard waste container. She read my blog on the subject of our Renton collection pilot program, and had some good observations to share.

As she says in her email, she lives in a warmer climate, so most of the year Renton will not have the smell issues that my mom has noticed in Livermore. Also, we aren't plagued by as many ants up here. She was not going to post her comments for this reason, but I think her overall observations are interesting and informative. (Besides, even though our ants aren't as prolific as in her arid climate, we have big creatures like black bears that show up in our neighborhoods)

( Click here to see my mom's email )

Here is the link to the garbage collection pilot program, along with my continuing encouragement that the mayor's office add this link to our city home page.

You can see from the maps whether you are affected by this pilot program or not (You also would have been advised by mail, and you will recieve new garbage cans if you are affected). If you are affected, you can use this page as a resource for calendars and information. If you are not directly affected, then your garbage service will continue as it always has, but you may still find it interesting to read through this and give the city feedback on whether any of the proposed pilot changes sound good or bad to you.

Click here for information on the Renton Collection Pilot Program

( Click here to see the latest request from citizens asking us to make this link availble )

I have been recieving more inquiries about the garbage pilot program, so I have let staff know that I wish to hear more about this at the Monday Council meeting (7:00 PM, Monday Aug 6, 7th Floor, Renton City Hall; also can be viewed via live telecast on cable channel 21 or on the internet at www.rentonwa.gov).

I have a few questions...and if I don't think of every question, members of the public can ask questions during audience comment.

This may be a good program; I'm reserving final jusdgement until we get an airing of the concerns.

Here is an email I sent to council, staff, and a citizen named Mr. George Rock (who was one of those who wrote to council on this matter).

Randy

-----Original Message-----
From: Randy Corman
To: Daniel Clawson; George Rock
Cc: Citizens to Council; Linda Knight
Subject: RE: Renton City Collection Pilot Program # 2 #3

Council-

Actually, I do have a few questions about this pilot program that I
intend to bring up at Monday's council meeting. Perhaps Mr. Rock could
join us, or tune in on television. I remember how much of an
improvement it was to go to every-week yard waste collection, because
prior to that residents were frequently getting confused as to the
pick-up weeks...particularly when there were holidays or snow storms. If
a resident goofs, and misses the garbage week (fails to get his/her four
cans down to the street by 6:00 AM on the every-other-week garbage date)
the result will be eight cans of garbage sitting for almost a month in
someone's side yard. Yuck! I just want to be sure we know what we are
doing, and that people are ready for this.

Thanks,

Randy Corman

Citizens needed more information and involvment before the mayor launched this garbage pilot program....and a briefing to the council would have been very nice and appropriate as well.

I am not keen on the idea of garbage collection every two weeks...I think that is asking for trouble from pests and odors. Also, the idea of large housholds like mine stockpiling four cans seems like a lot of garbage sitting around in neighborhoods. And yes, we can put the food waste in the garbage disposal or the yard-waste container, but what about greasy food wrappers that attract rodents for weeks at a time.

If we are trying to pilot something like this, I feel we need an opt-out option for people who don't want to be part of the pilot program, and we ideally should work though the neighborhood program to see if there is a neighborhood that would volunteer to test this concept. I don't think it is fair to simply send someone a letter saying we are cutting their service and that they will have to pay the same fee as always...end of story.

( Click here to see one of the emails council has recieved on this topic )