The new year brings a series of major changes in the way Delawareans dispose of household waste, as the state makes the transition to universal local recycling.
The changes will get the State of Delaware out of the recycling business this year and hand it over to municipal and private waste haulers. Delawareans in all three counties will be affected starting next week.
Beginning Jan. 1, yard waste will be banned from Delaware Solid Waste Authority landfills in Kent and Sussex counties. Yard waste dropoff stations, most of which charge a fee, are available during the transition while private haulers gear up to begin collecting curbside yard waste.
Also starting next week, DSWA will no longer pick up yard waste from its recycling customers in New Castle County, where the material has been banned from landfills since 2008. (Customers who have leftover stickers that they had purchased for yard-waste bags can return them to DSWA for a refund.)
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Christmas trees will be accepted at state parks and other dropoff sites throughout the state until Jan. 27.
The next step in the process starts March 31, when DSWA will stop picking up curbside recycling throughout the state, transferring that responsibility to private trash haulers. Many of those private companies say they’ll be ready to take over the job of curbside pickup, some six months before they are required to do so under the state’s new Universal Recycling Law.
“We made calls to haulers and the vast majority said April 1 is perfect,” said Rich Von Stetten, DSWA Senior Manager of Statewide Recycling. “They will have their recycling carts and be ready to go,”
A number of waste haulers contacted said they would be ready to begin phasing in recycling pickup this spring, though not necessarily by April 1, when the state pickup ends.
“Obviously we can’t start all of our 60,000 customers at the same time, but we plan to begin phasing in the recycling pickup sometime in the spring,” said Allen Thienpont, general manager of IDS, a Waste Industries-owned company (formerly Independent Disposal Services). IDS already provides curbside recycling service to some locations in New Castle County, but will need to distribute recycling bins to currently unserved customers as well as expanding their pickup routes. IDS has not yet determined what it will charge for recycling pickup.
The Universal Recycling Bill signed into law June 8 requires municipalities and private trash haulers to provide curbside recycling service to all single-family household customers in Delaware by Sept. 15. Recycling for multifamily complexes must be offered by Jan. 1, 2013, and for commercial businesses by Jan. 1, 2014.
DSWA has offered single-stream, curbside recycling pickup for residential customers for the last five years. At its peak, 50,000 customers statewide were using the biweekly pickup service. The Authority expects the number of its customers will have declined to about 13,000 customers by the end of this month, as people migrate to trash haulers who already provide the service.
DSWA charges $6 for pickup service, but Von Stetten said that the true cost to the Authority was closer to $10. “The reason DSWA got into recycling collection was because no one else was doing it,” Von Stetten said. “We got the whole thing going, but we were subsidizing it financially.”
The goal of the law is to decrease significantly the amount of recyclable materials currently going into landfills. It established a target of 72 percent of solid waste diverted from disposal by Jan. 1, 2015, and 85 percent by Jan. 1, 2020.
“Admittedly, they are aggressive targets, but we think we can meet them,” said David Small, deputy secretary of Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. “Everyone with trash service will now have access to recycling collection. We think that as people learn of the availability and convenience, they will begin to participate.”
The law also eliminated, as of Dec. 1, the refundable nickel deposit that had been charged on returnable bottles and replaced it with a 4 cent, nonrefundable recycling fee added to the cost of the bottled products. Revenue from the fee will used to fund grants and low-interest loans to help private haulers and municipalities with startup costs for recycling collection. Both the 4 cent fee and the grants and loans will be discontinued by Dec. 1, 2014, or when the Delaware Recycling Fund collects $22 million, whichever comes first.
The recycling fee was a controversial aspect of a controversial bill. Representative Gerald Hocker (R-Ocean View), Representative Greg Lavelle (R-Sharpley) and others termed it a “4 cent sales tax.” Lavelle added that the entire bill was more complicated than necessary. “It’s a 17-hump camel built by committee,” he said.
Representative Michael P. Mulrooney (D-Pennwood), prime sponsor of the recycling bill, said he is “thrilled” that the legislation was passed.
“I think it was the right thing to do, but about 20 years late. It will save us a lot of money on landfill space, and the one thing we’re not making anymore is land,” Mulrooney said. “With the cost of expanding landfill space, we are going to save Delaware and the people a lot of money. It’s good for the state and good for the people.”
Although recycling is still voluntary for customers, they will be paying for the pickup service whether they use it or not. According to the law, customers will be billed a single charge for the collection of waste and recyclables, without the costs broken out.
Lavelle objected to the law’s stipulation that the cost for recycling not be broken out on costumer’s waste-hauling bills, calling it a matter of transparency and consumer choice. He and Representative Daniel Short (R-Seaford) had proposed an amendment that would have allowed the cost to be detailed, but it was defeated.
Lisa Kardell, director of public affairs for private hauler Waste Management, said that waste hauling costs for the company’s 55,000 customers statewide vary based on service and area. She did not have a cost breakdown for the recycling service. Waste Management already provides single-stream recycling collection for some of its Delaware customers and hopes to roll it out to all customers sometime this spring, she added.
IDS’s Thienpont expressed concern that some customers might be upset with the new recycling arrangements. “Nobody likes it when something is forced on them. It was forced on us, too, but we’re ready to move forward with the recycling pickup, and we think it will be a good thing in the end,” he said.
Econo-Haul owner Joe Maier plans to begin recycling pickup for former DSWA customers April 1 and to expand the service by June to all of his customers. He has 10,000 customers in New Castle County.
Former DSWA customers will pay Econo-Haul $5 per month for the service in April and May. After that, all Econo-Haul customers will pay the same amount, which Maier anticipates could be as low as $1 or $2 monthly, provided his company applies for and gets a grant from the Delaware Recycling Fund to cover the cost of the recycling carts he must purchase, which cost $50 each.
The City of Rehoboth Beach has offered single-stream curbside recycling free to homeowners since April 2008. Out of 2,600 households in the city, about 1,175 participate. The cost to the city is $1 per house per pickup, with the frequency of pickup varying by season. City Manager Greg Ferrese does not anticipate any change to the way the city handles recycling.
The expected increase in recycling could generate jobs, Small added. “It’s hard to say how many jobs. It could be a few hundred, but we don’t really know yet.” He added that there has been some interest among those in the waste-management industry in building a material recovery facility in Delaware to handle recyclables. Currently, recyclable material collected in Delaware is taken out of state to be separated and sold.
The discontinuation of recycling collection has cost 15 jobs at DSWA, but most of those people left for similar jobs with private waste haulers, Von Stetten said.
Kardell said that Waste Management anticipates adding drivers, managers, and mechanics because of the new recycling law. The number hired will depend on how many people actually participate in curbside recycling.
DSWA will continue operating its 100 igloo sites for recycling statewide, which include receptacles for batteries and oil—materials that are not included in the single-stream recycling service.