Rogers recycling, trash rates to rise

ROGERS — Residents will see their recycling and trash pickup rates increase about 18 percent starting April 1.

The City Council on Tuesday voted 6-2 to increase the fees. Fees for curbside garbage and recycling pickup will increase from $15.15 to $17.93 a month for the standard 96-gallon cart. The monthly fee for the 64-gallon cart will go from $14.72 to $17.45.

Inland Waste Solutions, the company the city contracts with to collect trash and recycling, asked for a 4.8 percent increase in 2018, said Kevin Gardner, division general manager at the company.

Gardner said the company asked for a higher increase this year because its expenses increased. The company takes Rogers’ recyclables to Mark Recycling in Rogers. Mark Recycling in the past year started charging a $55 per ton tipping fee.

Inland also started paying more to dump garbage at Waste Management’s Eco-Vista Landfill in Tontitown. The disposal fee increased from about $28 per ton to about $33 per ton, he said.

None of the 18 percent increase is per the city’s request.

Without the new recycling fee and increased disposal fee, Inland would have asked for a 7.2 percent increase, Gardner said.

When recyclable material is contaminated because residents are putting non-recyclable material in their recycling carts, that can drive up costs, Gardner said.

Gardner said automated trucks pick up recycling carts, and the drivers don’t sort through them. That means when the material arrives at the recycling center,

the drivers have to take back any non-recyclable material and take it to the landfill, which is additional labor and gas. Recyclable material can also end up in the landfill if it gets too contaminated to recycle, he said. Gardner gave an example of someone putting an open jar of spaghetti sauce in their recycling cart.

Council member Mandy McDonald Brashear, who voted against the fee increase, said she understood why contamination drives up cost but had a difficult time with passing the cost along to everyone, regardless of whether they are recycling correctly. She said some residents she talked to were confused as to what is contamination.

“They don’t know what can go in that recycle bin and what can’t,” she said.

Mayor Greg Hines agreed what can and cannot be recycled can be confusing.

“We need to do a little better job of shoving it down people’s throat and making them drink the Kool-Aid,” Hines said.

Hines said he had met with Ben Cline, the city’s public relations specialist, about how to better educate the public.

“We’re going to use the month of April to really push hard the rules of recycling and the cost of not recycling,” he said.

Hines said the city would begin working with schools to teach kids what can be recycled.

“What does a fourth- or fifth-grader want to do just about more than anything in the world? Not sleep is one, but second is know something their parents don’t know and be able to go home and tell mom and dad ‘what I know that you don’t know,’” Hines said.

Garder said Rogers has about a 25 percent contamination rate in its recycling carts. Inland sees the most contamination in the southeast part of town. Hines said the city would focus its education efforts in the geographic areas where there was the most contamination.

Council members Mark Kruger, Gary Townzen, Marge Wolf, Clay Kendall, Jerry Carmichael and Barney Hayes voted for the fee increase. Council members Brashear and Betsy Reithemeyer were opposed.