Let’s Talk Trash by Susan Efroymson

Trash talking is not usually the fare of respectable religious types, but in this case, Cleveland Heights City Council has just approved a resolution to change the Refuse and Recycling system in the city and has increased the billing to reflect  the 2020 costs, so just this once, let’s talk trash.

Quick History Lesson

The discussion began in January of 2018 when China, who previously was the biggest importer of trash, abruptly stopped taking the world’s recyclables. The US market has been slow to create its own infrastructure leaving sorting centers officially called Materials Recovery Facilities or more commonly, MRFs, with recyclables they could no longer sell. What was once a profitable market, has now become an expense. Cities were paid for their recyclables and contracts were not up yet. Cuyahoga County has a consortium on recycling and the MRFs appealed the contracts which stipulated that the cities must be paid a minimum for their goods, even as they incurred costs for the same loads. The reply, to paraphrase, “This is what a contract’s for”  Sorry, no relief. But the MRFs were bleeding and the contract was set to expire in September of 2020. As expected, renewal contracts folded in their losses in much higher costs.

So in 2018 Cleveland Heights commissioned a Refuse and Recycling Task Force (RRTF – full disclosure I was on it) to deal with the two issues that would hit when the contract ended: Rising costs and the end of the Blue Plastic Recycling Bags.

The bags created a political conundrum: If we are trying to be environmentally friendly, why are we using plastic in the first place. Second, the MRF centers are large conveyor belts with a combination of machine and hand sorting going on. Whenever the plastic gets caught in the gears, the entire facility shuts down, all the employees unproductively wait, and the repair crews untangle the mess and fix the damage. That costs. So one step the MRFs promised was the end of taking plastic bags at the end of those contracts.

Another cost is contaminated recycling. Wish-cycling is the term for people throwing in items that cannot be recycled or throwing in dirty or wet items  Items for recycling need to be clean and dry. Cleveland Heights’ high contamination rate means that those items sent to the MRF that are unusable then have to be sent to the landfill anyway. This too, raises costs which are then folded into the future recycling contracts.

For most cities already outsourcing to Kimble, Rumpke, and Waste Management, the local haulers who all use containers, little adjustment would be needed. Not so Cleveland Heights. Cleveland Heights boasts its own Transfer Station and takes care of Refuse and Recycling as part of its Public Works Department. Garbage is taken there first, before being sent to either Landfill or the MRF. This asset needs repair and upkeep but affords the city the ability to customize services in ways outsourcing would charge extra for if they did it at all. What was clear was that the city’s trucks were old, many needing replacing, and should the city want to continue to provide services, it would have to address these issues for which it was not budgeted.

The task force was charged with looking at the three options: Continue using bags for garbage which doesn’t address the recycling concerns; Move to containers for both garbage and recycling but outsource the pick up and processing service.  Or move to containers for both and have our department enter the 21st century with the appropriate equipment. The task force painstakingly looked at the pros and cons or each of these, their costs and their effects on the homeowner with special consideration for bulk pickups, holiday pickups (Yom Tov as well as December’s fir trees), lawn and leaf refuse and rental property move outs as well as other public locations. After eliminating the first option as undesirable and impractical and after extrapolating from the new contracts offered to other cities and using our residential numbers, it found that the costs of outsourcing would end up being similar enough to keeping it in-house.  The benefits of pride in doing it ourselves would be preserved. If we take care of our own, and  we will do a better job and be able to provide  the extra touches we are accustomed to. Outsourcing means impersonal service, and any requests for accommodation of the sort the city now gets, would be a separate charge or unavailable altogether. Other advantages to doing it inhouse included not having to lfire any employees. Going automated would cut down the number of employees needed with the greater efficiency the new technology would provide, but that  would happen through regular attrition instead of  firing, upcoming retirements and moving resources within the department. Additionally, automation provides greater safety to our employees which is just responsible management. It also lowers liability and mandatory  Bureau of Workers Compensation costs for the city.

The task force did not look at Enterprise pricing versus our current system and therefore had a lower number in mind for any increases to fees. Enterprise pricing implies that homeowners are billed for the entire cost running the department.  Currently, some of the costs are born by the general funds, and therefore the entire cost has never been included in the landfill bill. Put another way, each homeowner pays a fee for part, but income taxes subsidized the rest.  An outside firm later introduced the city to the concept of making the fees actually reflect and cover the entire cost of the refuse and recycling enterprise. They also ratified the belief that costs would have been similar no matter the option chosen.

The city could lower costs by suspending recycling temporarily until market value makes it more affordable such as the city of Cleveland and Richmond Heights have done, but in Cleveland Heights, that remains an unpopular solution. As Sandy Moran, a citizen who watched the task force meetings commented, “We may as well remove the tree from our (city’s) logo,  if we do that.”

The first steps were taken earlier this month as the measure passed City Council. Cleveland.com reports that homeowners’ monthly sanitation fees will be increasing from the current $11.50, to $16.17 in the first year, up $4.67. It will be followed the next year, by an increase to $16.48 per month, and $16.83 in year three, with similar annual increases, finally reaching $19.32 per month in year ten. These costs remain $2 lower than the original propositions.

The approximately 900 residents using the homestead exemption program, would see their bills rise from $3, currently to $7.67 in 2021 and in ten years, $10.82, just over half of the regular costs.

One reason for the higher numbers is that prior to this, Council had not budgeted the cost of replacing the vehicles into the annual forecast. Cleveland Heights will be applying for a loan to finance the new equipment. The fees are set with the knowledge that considering the daily beating garbage trucks take, there is a new need for trucks every ten years. This rise in cost will reflect both the current loan and the realization that ten years will pass in ten years and the city will need to be ready to purchase new equipment as well as the contract realities in the new recycling economy.  The cost of garbage collection has simply increased and the fees reflect the new reality moving the city closer to the enterprise formula.

The rise in costs has been long in coming. These fees reflect the correction in cost for recycling, the upgrades to the transfer station and purchase of new and upgrades to the fleet of vehicles as well as new carts for every household. It is not recommended that there be separate costs based on quantity of use, so large families can breathe easily there. A homeowner needing more than the single garbage bin provided by the city, one for garbage, one for recycling, will need to purchase any additional containers, and purchasing them at bulk pricing through the city will keep that cost for homeowners down, but they will be a onetime cost not incur additional monthly fees. The new system is expected to be in place by the end of 2021.