SE MRC 12/8/10
Automated collection
Gunther Wellenstein from Lowell couldn’t attend; Lowell has automated, 1 year report attached
March 9 meeting: unacceptable plastics in the recycling bins
Automated has been expanding in Mass for past 4 years; 20(?) munis now do; many variations: PAYT,
recy only, recy and trash, cart size, collection frequency.
Framingham: Mike Lavin
Manual in house trash collection, contracted automated recycling collection. WM had been doing
manual weekly collection, went to SS 2 years ago. Went to carts due to budget. DPW took a 5% cut last
year, needed to find new system. Carts enabled biweekly recycling collection.
Some resistance to carts initially. Considered 96 gallon, huge resistance to size. Went to 64 gal,35 gal
for seniors/disabled, with option to get a 96. Bonded cart purchase, passed by one vote. 16,700 carts
delivered.
He wishes they had gone to 96 gal, 64 not big enough. Tonnage is up in spite of size.
Took 1.5 years to put it together get buy in from committees, boards, Town meeting. Final approval in
May, bureaucracy wanted to wait till July to purchase, didn’t roll out till this Sept. (initial plan was July).
Bought from state Contract, able to negotiate good rate with 2 vendors due to volume.
Installed RFID chips up front, $1.50 each. Would be more if later. Distribution was challenging, size
choice, address verifications. Sent mailing, people could mail back a post card to request a different
size, got 4000 req for 96 gal. Took a lot of admin time. WM did communication with residents regarding
routes. Full page ad in paper, 2 public meetings, easy weblink, local cable, second mailing. Borrowed
from other communities’ outreach materials.needed more than 6 people on phones entire first month,
still getting calls.
Distribution list required cross checking, multi use, multi unit bldgs bad addresses.
Distribution company did most of deliveries, Town had to deliver/ move around 2000. Labor intensive.
Saved $125K first year, not automated yet. $37/cart incl distribution, RFID, Cascades.
Will bid out automated now, look for 5 year contract, anticipate more savings. Semi-automated now.
People like the system now, coming around.
RfID helped with distribution tracking. Option to do RecycleBank.
If second cart is requested, must be a 96 gal.
Franklin, Chris White
Automated SW and recycling with RFID. Fee based, didn’t know who was paying and who was getting
service 2 years ago. About 9K customers. Started cart pickup in July.
Carts aided accountability; found a bunch of people getting service, not paying.
Exported Munis database of ratepayers to an Access database, flagged anomalies, nonpayers, MFDs
paying as single family.
Used Rehrig for carts, data mgmt, delivery, maintenance and repair. Found unknown addresses.
Went to work order system, in Munis database, for deliveries. Uses Access to track.
(see handout)
Can use RFID to find “missing” or stolen carts. Will be even more useful when trucks have readers
installed. Can transmit data to home base, track pickups (GPS). Hand held RFID reader is $4K. RFID tag
tied to cart serial numbers.
System makes sense. Added 400 paying customers due to carts.
Fall River- Betsey Westell
33K households served by muni DPW crew. 18% covered by automated trucks, carts, phased roll out.
Weekly SS. Most still have bins. People scared at first of change, then they love it. Those who don’t
have now are mad.
Very challenging to do startup. Started Oct 09, another Jan 2010, another July 2010.
Using 95 and 65 gal carts from Rehrig Pacific.
Casella doing Recycling, trash goes to Allied.
71 DPW staff, only 45 show up daily, trash, yardwaste, bulky, potholes, street lights, … Like a spielberg
movie. Need money to finish roll-out.
System is working, struggling to finance remainder ($5M). Union, political issues. Would be no problem
if they had adopted PAYT.
Recycling tons up from 158 TPM to 213 TPM, with just 18% covered.
Each household gets a 65 gal each for trash and recycling. Trash is limited to 65 gal. for those who have
carts, but no limit for those who don’t.
Big problem is overflow trash, can drop off excess.
North Attleboro- Michelle Bernier
PAYT since 1998, SS automated since 2008, manual PAYT still. Lots of education and enforcement since
then. Enterprise fund enables them to run program effectively. 8k Households served, including some
condos.
Base fee $230/unit, $1.50/bag. $3 Tags for bulky.
2008 WM and Casella bid SS as lower price than manual. Cart dist was a nightmare, weren’t offered
RFID. WM provided carts, owns them.
Problems are new people accustomed to “free” trash, MFDs.
Green carts – due to PAYT, often put non0recyclables in recycling carts, especially noncompliant plastics.
Recycling symbol on plastics is very misleading, confusing to people.
When writing contract, consider one ways, cars blocking carts, back down streets (put some
responsibilities on homeowner to place carts properly).
Cart dist took longer than expected, same problems as other towns, re-assigned house numbers, MFD,
opt-outs.
Need a muni staff person on truck with distribution company to avoid mis-deliveries.
5-10 calls/week about broken carts. (Cascades), big deal. WM has to deal. Mandate turnaround time to
fix in contract.
WM provided carts at “n/c”, offered 96 gal only, but town requested some 64 gal, got. Didn’t offer
residents option, but some called on their own.
Cart distribution was one of the worst times of her life.
Tonnage increase is huge, part of problem is contaminated recycling. She drives a route every week to
inspect, connect with and train drivers.
Norwood- Doris Burtman
Automated trash and recycling, 28k residents
MFD issues, work closely with drivers
2008-went through same problems with distribution.
TM said 64 gal trash, 96 gal recycling, no discussion, ”live with it”, till seniors complained too big.
PU up to 6 MFD units. Kathi M TA grant helped a lot with MFD issues.
Wish she had tracked their carts, depends on WM drivers to report 2nd trash carts (not legal).
Need to communicate with Anyone at TH who fields calls, DPW, BOH, Assessors, bldg inspector (C&D),
Meet regularly with route drivers
She visited problem sites, time consuming but rewarding. Dev relationships with property owners.
Visibility to residents is important. If talk doesn’t work, send compliance letter.
Automated doesn’t have to be single stream; can do alternate weeks paper/occ, B&C
Casella, Bob Capadona
10K out of 14K at Charlestown/Auburn is SS
Prices are strong, unusual for this time of year
Change from DS to SS without “right sizing” carts makes no difference. Can increase a lot with carts
Residuals do go up with bigger containers. Drive costs up, messes up equipment, down time.
MRFs all have different equipment, acceptable lists are different
Fiber percent down 5-8% over past 2 years. Is now 58% fiber, 42% containers
Export rate varies by location.
UBB will lose revenue doe processors.
Casella paying $10-25/ton for SS now. DS no pay commingle,
WM, Jim Nocella
Look at big picture – collection cost, avoided disposal, commodity value, processing costs in determining
muni program
Need strong education piece explaining acceptables in SS. Contamination is a problem, esp bags,
sharps, lots of other stuff.
Newark Group, Johnny Gold
Newark is national, owns 2 recovery plants in Mass. Makes boxboard. 2001 state of art Fitchburg plant,
Newark America, takes loose curbside mix, designed for DS. Hates SS, and they own a SS plant. Broken
glass is still a big problem. Dump 7-30 CY containers/day, 15-25% outthrows  landfill. Not enforcing
specs due to supply.
Market rates are near historic highs. US shut down lots of paper mills over years. Newark shut down 5
mills in last 5 years, can’t compete with export market. China is building capacity like mad, slave labor,
pollution. Waste paper is our #1 export. Not reliable.
We need good quality material. Mills will pay more for DS than SS.
Find better outlet for outthrows? New diesel technology? Too expensive.
Technology for sortation is constantly improving.
Munis need help with outreach, incentives.
Salem “The Perfect Pickup” random household selected $50 gift cert donated by Newark.
Munis need to do better to prevent contamination.
Need help from drivers, cite or note noncompliant recycling.
What is Europe doing? Not much, Quality is even worse.
15 minute video clip about processing for cable? Different vendors take different things.
Plastic bags are the biggest problem.
Processors need to enforce quality control, reject loads. Munis need to enforce, haulers need to
enforce.
Need a window in the carts to see contamination.