Changes to Williamsburg recycling program coming this summer

A couple changes in the city’s recycling program are coming this summer: large rolling recycling trash cans and a bi-weekly recycling pickup.

Williamsburg City Council members voted 5-0 Thursday to enter an agreement with the Virginia Peninsula Public Service Authority (VPPSA) to change recycling companies. As a regional body, VPPSA now takes care of recycling contracts for York County, James City County, Poquoson and Williamsburg.

It’s a way, Director of Public Works Dan Clayton said, to leverage price – a larger pool of serviceable houses means a better bargaining chip with companies.

Right now, VPPSA pays $138,000 to Chesapeake-based Tidewater Fibre for a once-weekly recycling collection service. That contract runs out on June 30, 2014 and, after Thursday’s meeting, it will not be renewed and the city will instead do business with West Point-based County Waste for a $70,000 bi-weekly recycling program.

No changes in per-customer rates were discussed at the meeting.

While collection days will be half as frequent, citizens will be given a 68-gallon rolling recycling trash can – a container almost four times larger than the carry-out green bins now being used. In the event the container is inappropriately sized for a customer, VPPSA Executive Director Steve Geissler said smaller rolling containers and larger ones will be available at no extra cost by contacting public works.

When compared to the current program, there will be no change to the materials that are accepted for recycling. The current program now accepts newsprint, corrugate, cardboard, mixed paper, glass bottles and jars, aluminum cans and plastic bottles.

The new rolling containers will be picked up by a mechanical arm attached to the recycling truck. Because of the method of pickup, containers would need to be placed with the lid opening facing the street.

For those physically unable to roll the cart to the street, employees in the recycling truck will roll the cart to the street for them. Houses where this is necessary will be marked on the route map for drivers – the same way it works now.

Councilman Doug Pons asked if there had been any consideration of accepting other plastics along with bottles. It had been a consideration, Geissler said, and VPPSA decided not to pursue it because he felt it would be deceiving the customers and there wasn’t a good market for it.

The two most common household plastic items the recycling contract does not accept are plastic bags and yogurt cups. When those materials enter a plant that accepts them, Geissler said, they are often mixed together and turned into a “mixed-plastic bundle.”

Most of the markets for the bundles, he said, are overseas in places like China. He felt it would be deceptive to tell customers the materials are being re-purposed when they are ending up in a bundle headed overseas or, in some cases, to a landfill.

If the nearly half price cut seems too good to be true, Geissler would agree. That’s why, he said, VPPSA spent time researching the company, reviewing records from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, doing a site inspection and investigating how the materials were processed and where they ended up.

Geissler said the answers they found coupled with the fact the company already provides service to Spotsylvania, Stafford, King George and New Kent counties, VPPSA staff felt confident in the viability of the company.

Pons and Mayor Clyde Haulman both worried citizens had not yet been informed thoroughly about the change. Vice Mayor Paul Freiling alluded to the sentiment as well.

“This sounds like this is a full-time employment guarantee for Kate Hoving,” Freiling said, referring to the city’s employee in charge of public relations.

The next step for the VPPSA staff, Geissler said, is to put together information on the program for the public and to figure out a way to effectively distribute it.