The Rhino on Recycling
From Alex Jakubsen at The Rhino Times:
ReCommunity is the city’s current recycling contractor and the city has been paying the company to recycle Greensboro’s material since 1992. By comparison, Waste Management has been paying Winston-Salem a percentage of the money it makes selling that city’s recyclables since 1999. The proposal from ReCommunity recommended by Greensboro Field Operations Director Dale Wyrick, based on research by Readling, agrees to pay the city between $29 and $31 per ton on recyclables depending on monthly volumes…
The current ReCommunity contract has been a financial disaster for the city. “We’ve never made a profit in 18 years; we’ve always come out at a loss,” said Councilmember Trudy Wade during questioning. “Over 20 years, I would think you’ve made a lot of money off Greensboro.”…
Several councilmembers expressed concern over the 10-year length of ReCommunity’s proposed contract. Councilmember Jim Kee said he was worried such a long contract could prevent the city from taking advantage of future developments in recycling markets, much as the city’s current 15-year contract with ReCommunity has kept the city paying for recycling while other municipalities have been profiting on recycling for more than 10 years. He brought up the city’s waste disposal contracts, in which the city dealt with three-year terms in expectation of “alternative ways of disposal.”…
Councilmember Nancy Vaughan made the motion to carry the RFP process into a “best and final offer” phase with ReCommunity and Waste Management, which passed 9 to 0. The companies are scheduled to submit their final offers to city staff by August 20, which will then be presented to the council at a special work session on Sept. 10. The City Council is expected to select a vendor at their regular meeting on Sept. 18.
Committing to a ten year contract with ReCommunity, based on past performance, is obviously neither the better solution nor in the best interest of Greensboro.
Meanwhile, I’ve received no response to my email to city council regarding sale of methane at the landfill and raising rates at the transfer station to cover overhead. Nor am I aware of any action taken by council on those issues.
Jeff, here is the link to the Waste Management and Recycling Task Force. The task force was appointed in March. There are three subcommittees: Recycling, Waste to Energy (which includes methane) and Waste Disposal. The task force and subcommittee meetings are open to the public.
http://www.greensboro-nc.gov/index.aspx?page=3577
Two council meetings ago we received an update from the task force (a copy of their report can also found on the link). Page 4 of the Interim Report outlines the methane discussions through June. This past week the subcommittee suggested developing an RFQ to help determine the best way to utilize utilize the methane.
I agree with raising our tip fees to cover our costs. The tip fee short-fall was first discussed at a Task Force Meeting. Since many of our costs are fixed we are trying to determine if we lose business to competing transfer stations, could that loss of that business actually result in an increase to City taxpayers (since fixed costs remain the same) Staff is in the process of calculating what that “tipping point” is (no pun intended).