The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
New trash carts to arrive in April
Watch out Lorain: The carts are coming. But using wheeled cans to take garbage to the curb will not be a life altering event, said the area manager for waste company Republic Services Inc.
An introduction to Lorain’s new automated method of trash collection came in a March 29 town hall meeting held by Ward 4 Councilman Greg Argenti. At least 70 people came out to the Rebman On the Avenue Party Facility for the discussion.
Dave Kidder, area municipal services manager for Republic Services, brought three colleagues
to explain the changes and three blue wheeled cans to show the crowd.
The assembled Lorainites brought their fears about high costs and health hazards of rolling garbage and recycling cans to the curb every week.
The group spent an hour hashing out how Lorain will adapt when Republic Services begins delivering the blue carts to residents starting in early April.
In 2007, Republic Services began delivering wheeled cans in LaGrange. That was the start of automated collection in Lorain County and the method has grown in years since, Kidder said.
Lorain has about 20,000 households each generating an average of 1,500 pounds of trash a year, Kidder said.
That waste ends up in the Lorain County landfill in New Russia Township outside Oberlin, Kidder said.
Landfills are finite spaces and eventually Lorain County’s landfill will be filled, he said. Without a local landfill, the local trash rates will go up, Kidder said.
“So part of the reason for this program, one of the major reasons for this program, is to promote the use of this cart, which is the recycle cart,” Kidder said, displaying the can with the light blue lid.
“And I hate to tell you this but the city of Lorain unfortunately per home generates the least amount of recyclables in Lorain County,” Kidder said. “That needs to be changed,” he said, or the disposal rates will shoot up.
Recyclable materials also stay in Lorain County at Republic Services’ recycling center, which opened in 1990, Kidder said.
“It sits right in front of the landfill,” Kidder said. “There’s a reason for that: We want to use it more and use the landfill less.”
The method with wheeled containers works in cities and rural areas of Lorain County, Kidder said.
Kidder asked the crowd how many of their grandchildren who want to come to Lorain to pick up tons of trash per day. The money is pretty good, Kidder said, but no one raised their hands.
There were plenty of hands up to ask questions, though. The crowd was skeptical the system will work in Lorain.
Many of the questions dealt with technical details about putting out various types of refuse and how residents could get help moving the containers.
They also asked how much money Republic Services would make selling recyclable materials.
Republic Services can sell some plastics, but gets no money from collecting glass, which is the heaviest recyclable item collected, Kidder said. One attendee countered with a MarketWatch report that Republic Services Inc. posted a profit of $1.8 billion for the fourth quarter of 2016.
Argenti conceded he voted for the change in Lorain. It is going to happen sometime, he said, and if residents can’t embrace it, they should deal with it.
“It’s a change,” he said. “Like I say, it was coming sooner or later. It’s just coming a little bit sooner maybe than some folks would like.”