- R.B.
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Would you be OK if the city collected your trash every other week instead of every week? Well like it or not, you might be one of 800 guinea pigs Seattle residents picked for a six-month bi-weekly garbage collection pilot program to see if it increases recycling and composting in the city. Or whether the idea stinks, literally.
At present, 34,000 tons of food scraps and recyclables make their way into the garbage cans of single-family residences every year.
SPU’s Solid Waste Director Tim Croll presented the proposal —estimated to cost $350,000—to the Seattle City Council’s Public Utilities and Neighborhoods Committee meeting yesterday. If the full council approves the pilot program, and it is eventually turned into a new way of collectiing trash throughout all of Seattle, it would save the city $6.4 million annually. It would also reduce 20 percent of garbage collection trips made. Weekly yard and food waste collection will still be there. Council Member Mike O’Brien says the proposal is consistent with Seattle’s zero waste goals, which aims to recycle 60 percent of waste from the city’s garbage stream by 2012. Right now, Seattle is at 51 percent. “We need to get that 9 percent in the next two years,” O’Brien says.
Heather Trim of Zero Waste Seattle says that some neighborhoods will be queuing up to take part in the pilot. “People in Seattle want to see reduction of greenhouse gases, so I think it’s great,” she says.
But what if the city’s zero waste goals come back to haunt it—like it happened in Berkeley? That city’s aggressive composting and recycling culture led to residents switching to smaller trash cans that, under new rules, were cheaper to have serviced. This led to a decline of $4 million in Berkeley’s refuse revenue.
Just like Berkeley, Seattle bills everyone on the size of their trash can.
“You are right that could be a problem, that’s why we want to test it first,” O’Brien says. “But I don’t think it will be a huge problem. We want to see whether people will shift from garbage to more recycling. That will help us to figure out what kind of rates we should set, so that when we vote on it, people won’t be surprised.”
So what do you think Seattle, would you recycle more if the city picked up your trash less frequently?
Are they going to charge me half as much or give me a trash can twice the size for the same price? Otherwise this doesn’t make sense. I already fill my recycling and yard waste. I can’t reduce my trash any more and use the small size can.
I need my recycling picked up once per week, period. I know we are talking about garbage, but if I recycle MORE (which I couldn’t, I am already recycling everything) I’d need two recycling pickups per week, and I only get two per month.
It doesn’t really matter if I could go two weeks without a garbage pickup – I am far more concerned about what’s going to happen in my neighborhood with the houses that have 4+ people living in them – households with two or more kids, or big houses that have 8 roommates.
Yeah, their food waste SHOULD be in the yard bin, NOT the garbage, but I don’t want to find out how lazy they are the hard way.
I’d be happy to dump my trash in the Billionaires Tunnel.
Will that help?
I like the idea. Our family of four barely fills the little black cube each week. A slightly larger container and less frequent pickups would be fine.
#2 I totally agree with more recycling pick up-BUT if you have an extra garbage can and label it clearly, they will empty it for you for free.
Fine with me.
We use one of those mini-cans, and even that is only half full every week. We’re very diligent in our recycling and composting, and barely generate much actual garbage any more. The trash could easily go to a every-other-week schedule.
Larger households probably could too, if they had bigger cans.
We already recycle everything we possibly can and probably some stuff that can’t actually be recycled but look like they can. Our trash can only fills up if I forget to take it out some weeks anyway, so yeah, biweekly trash pickup would be fine (if they charged me less) but I wouldn’t recycle more.
@3 Shut up Will.
@1 Yeah really. I mean if they came and got my recycling once a week I could go along but as it stands it seems like I would be getting much less service for the same cost.
I’m with @7. We already recycle as much as we can, and our trash rarely comes anywhere near being full — most weeks there’s one or maybe two lonely little grocery bags full of trash sitting in there, so every other week would be fine.
There’s a balance to strike here, and avoiding a victim-of-their-own-success story like Berkeley’s is something to keep in mind.
While true, I only typed that first sentence so I could segue into a rant about our mayor making composting mandatory; which, in a city that is most definitely losing the war against vermin, is an asinine idea. Same goes for your recycling program that may actually discourage recycling, you (we) suck at garbage, SF.
Ok, I’m done for now.
My fiance and I produce about one 13 gallon trash bag per week, with all the little ones around the house emptied when we feel like it. Us being forgetful, we often fail to put out our barely full cans every week anyways.
It would be interesting to see if the kind of people who call for “spending cuts” would be willing to sacrifice their own convenience for the sake of their spending cuts.
Would this apply to apartments? My neighbors are a bunch of lazy fucks, and this program would be a disaster for my building.
I can’t remember the last time my trashcan was full for pickup, but I’m always struggling with cramming stuff into my recycling bin.
I would totally be down with compost & recycling once a week – and trash every other week or more. I mean, really.
As I was taking out the trash and compost tonight, I was just wishing I could pay less for a biweekly trash pickup option. Yard waste is so much cheaper as it is, it just seems lazy to pitch stuff into the trash bin. But in my old condo building, 3 out of 16 units used the compost bin. Reminders & encouragement didn’t do anything to change that, so maybe this new program will.
It’s been that way at my house for about a year now. I’ve gotten along fine. Unless you have infants, most of your stinky stuff will be in the compost bucket.
our family of three only has trash picked up once a month, and we do quite fine. as long as you are diligent about putting things in the green, it’s really not that difficult at all.
We do it in Toronto. It works okay.
What if you have dirty diapers? Our garbage can would be twice the size we need for garbage, except it fills up every week with bags of diapers, since we have an infant.
On Capitol Hill I’m sure this isn’t an issue, but in some neighborhoods I can’t imagine the stench of house after house of hundreds of diapers fermenting in closed garbage cans over two weeks. Maybe for such households they could give out hermetically sealable cans.
Also, I wish we could have a separate compost bin from yard waste bin: we routinely fill our yard waste bin with actual yard waste most weeks, and so other compostables can’t be put out (only because extra bags cost a fair amount more).
We do this in Olympia. Got bigger bins. Works fine. And the city managed to avoid several rate increases because of the savings.
Capitol Hill appt bldg: our recycling is picked up every other week and the garbage twice a week I believe and it’s still not enough. We have trash and recycling especially spilling on the street. Don’t reduce the trash pick, but do recycling at least once a week…
If the City would start recycling Styrofoam, I probably wouldn’t even need the small garbage can I have now.
@19 Would a change like this encourage you to use cloth diapers, or do you think your diaper habits would stay the same?
We don’t even have compost bins at my apartment complex. And yes, it’s in the city.
We have three adults in our household, have the smallest available trash bin, and still set it out only every two weeks or so. Bring it on!!
Totes fine with me. As is, I generate more recycling than trash. Recycling/yard waste weekly, trash bi-monthly. Thx.
Get rid of recycling and trash pickup altogether. If people absolutely need to buy stupid disposable water bottles and TV dinner boxes they can use their own land as a dump and try to sell their plastic on ebay.
Two weeks of rotting stench.
The city is obsolete.
Bring it on.
@28, it’s not rotting because the rotting stuff is in the food waste, which is the yard waste. You wouldn’t know that, because you live in a toilet suburb. If you’re smelling something rotting, it’s your soul.
@28: “The city is obsolete.”
boop boop boop— boneheaded suburbanite right wing talking point alert—boop boop boop
This solution would be fine with me. We barely fill our trash bin each week—2 small bags maximum—and we often forget to take out the recycling (which comes every 2 weeks) and those occasional monthly pickups are not a problem. Honestly, the only trash and recycling I get comes from my mailbox! if the freaking junk mail would stop (yes, I’m on lists but it doesn’t matter) I wouldn’t have barely any trash at all!
People buy too much packaging. Maybe less pickup will inspire them to not buy so much waste.
I’m up for it- we forget to take it out almost every other week anyway.
That’s how we do it in Renton. Of course, we’re a bonehead suburb, so we’re probably doing it wrong. Please Seattle, show us the way.
I’d be more favorably inclined if we had trash bins with some heft. The ones we have are feather-weight and the garbage hauler insists on folding the lid and pushing it to the bottom of the container, so it won’t blow away in the breeze.
And with 8 people in our household (families doubled up due to the Great Recession) we’d definitely need a larger bin.
This is an attempt to cut city services, cloaked in ‘environmentalism’. I’m not holding my breath that the city would double the size of my garbage can or slash the rate in half. And yes, my yard/food waste and recycling bins are crammed full before every pickup.
What Jeff @26 said. Our garbage is half full and our recycling is overflowing every week. Make recycling pickups every week, garbage every 2 and we’re all good.
Every other week would be great. It would typically take us a month to fill up our mini-‘can’.
I rarely fill up my mini-can, so I’m all for this. But one thing that hasn’t been mentioned is why are recycling bins overflowing and needing to be picked up more frequently? We need to BUY LESS, and when we do buy things, we need LESS PACKAGING. Remember, the slogan is REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE. The city needs to address all three parts.
Until something is done with business and apartment/condo building collection changing to encourage recycling and composting, nothing will matter.
i only take my garbage out every 2 weeks on average anyway and even then it’s rarely full. So, I say yes! But maybe there should be refresher info sent out on exactly what can go into recycling and yard/kitchen waste, my neighbors seem to have no idea and I’m guess they aren’t the only ones.
I already put my Micro-can out less than or about once a month! It’s easy when most of the stuff that would normally go in it in Seattle is now recyclable, yard waste-able, or reduce-able, meaning you don’t have to buy anything with lot of waste associated with it! All it takes is a bit of forethought and I hope the idea spreads! Reduce, Reuse, Recycle to
be cliche!