The City of Bellingham and the local Sanitary Service Company (SSC) want to make recycling in the city a little bit easier for residents, while also lowering processing costs and supporting the environment.
A proposed citywide switch would move single-family homes from a three-bin system to a commingled one, with a single 96-gallon recycling bin. Under the city’s proposal, SSC also would extend optional organic composting services to all customers.
It’s unclear when the new system would be implemented and at what cost to consumers as the changes require renegotiation of the city’s contract with SSC. The change would not affect the city’s budget as residents are required to pay SSC directly for waste services.
The proposed changes would improve collection efficiency and help the city reach established climate action goals, which include increasing recycling measures and lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
“Times are changing and there’s a need to re-evaluate our solid waste collection system,” City of Bellingham Public Works Director Eric Johnston said in an announcement. “We believe single stream recycling and organic waste collection will be able to best balance economic impact, environmental impact, and recycling responsibility.”
Adding organic materials to Bellingham’s waste collection could be a major boon for landfill reduction goals. Currently, Johnston estimates, about 30% of Bellinghams’ residential waste is organic material: egg shells, leaves and yard waste, coffee grounds, wood chips, and the like.
And, it puts the city ahead of the curve, in compliance with the 2022 Organics Management Law passed by the Washington legislature last year. The law, which requires local governments to have an organic waste program in place by 2027, requires communities to divert more organic material waste away from landfills.
Currently, about 15% of all methane emissions in the United States come from landfills, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and diverting compostable materials away from the landfill will help reduce those emissions.
The Bellingham City Council will consider a new resolution to implement these changes to the city’s residential recycling and waste collection services, at the request of the city and SSC during the Feb. 27 council meeting.
The city has partnered with SSC on residential garbage collection for decades. Over the years, though, processing recyclables has become significantly more expensive for the company.
Historically, the company made a “small profit” selling recyclables, according to the city’s website. In recent years, demand for recyclables has dropped, and SSC lost that source of revenue. Now, the company pays $200 per ton to process the materials. Comparatively, it only costs the company $114 per ton to process landfill waste.
“Recycling collection programs can no longer rely on commodity markets to fund or reduce collection costs,” said SSC General Manager Ted Carlson.
Carlson, the former public works director for the city, said SSC hopes single-stream recycling will help reduce operational costs for the company and eschew future rate hikes.
In 2022, Bellingham’s Edgemoor neighborhood participated in a single-stream recycling pilot project, and it led to reduced operational costs and improved worker safety for SSC, as well as reduced climate emissions and less litter around the neighborhood from materials blowing out of the present open-topped bins.
