Company negotiating once-a-week service

It may soon be time for Las Vegas city dwellers to say goodbye to twice-a-week trash pickup. Waste-disposal company Republic Services of Southern Nevada has been negotiating with the staff at the city of Las Vegas for about a year in hopes of implementing single-stream recycling in exchange for a 15-year contract extension.

“Discussions to update the franchise agreement and the solid waste ordinance are ongoing and we expect to have an agenda item to the City Council before the end of the year,” city spokesman Jace Radke said.

Republic’s current contract with the city expires in 2021. North Las Vegas, Henderson and most of Clark County already have single-stream recycling, which entails once-a-week trash pickup, once-a-week recycling pickup, and bulky-item pickup once every other week. Las Vegas is the last municipality holding onto recycling sorting bins, twice-a-week trash pickup and every-other-week recycling pickup. Las Vegas Councilman Bob Beers who represents the city’s Ward 2, said broadening single-stream recycling service citywide in Las Vegas is an issue residents raise from time to time.

The negotiations have raised questions for skeptics about the effectiveness of the single-stream program and Republic’s ability to secure a long-term contract before the current one expires.

Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani said knowing what she knows now, she would caution City Council members to do their due diligence.

“I’m a supporter of recycling but they should not have taken people’s trash day away in order to be able to implement weekly (recycling),” Giunchigliani said. “They could have done it weekly, and then we could have them sit down and say, ‘OK let’s measure how much actual trash versus recycling is going in.’ Then, if you can prove to the customer that there is less trash, which would justify losing a day, then fine. But you don’t take something away that you had the benefit of for the past 30 years.”

Tim Oudman, market vice president of Republic Services, said service is not being cut, just rearranged. A truck is still driving by a home the same number of times during a two-week period, he said.

In response to customers who are unhappy with the trash pickup schedule that comes with singlestream recycling, Oudman said “the new program is why we’re seeing 400 percent increases in the effectiveness of the program.”

A review of the single-stream