TRURO – Colchester County residents could soon see their recyclables and garbage/compost collections occurring on the same day, if a proposal by Miller Waste Systems is approved by council.
The move would also see the end of Monday waste collections.
“Garbage, I know people set their clock by it and if we pick it up a thousand times right, they don’t notice,” Jeff Traver, the company’s district manager for the Eastern Region, told county council during a presentation Thursday night. “But if that one time we screw it up, man they’re on the phone to you guys.”
Currently, recyclables are collected on one week in a given area while garbage/compost pickups are done the following week.
Under the proposed system, however, all pickups at an individual residence would occur on the same day, with the recyclable truck making the first pass and the garbage collections coming after. Individual collection would still occur on a two-week cycle as it does now.
Traver said the proposed system would make it easier for all residents to follow while also improving the system for his company.
“It’s either garbage week or its not garbage week. If I’ve got a bunch of stuff in my garage, chances are it’s garbage week.”
One of the reasons for the proposed change is to eliminate issues that arise on weeks in which a holiday occurs, which in most cases is a Monday.
“Holidays can be challenging for us,” Traver said. “We have to run on Saturday, residents aren’t used to it and so they miss the garbage collection. This is particularly troublesome at Christmas so we find it is better to go Tuesday to Friday.”
Another upside to the change, he said, is that it would enable the company to remove one truck from its fleet, which could reduce the company’s carbon footprint by approximately 204,000 lbs. of carbon emissions per year.
From a financial perspective, Traver said the move would save the company approximately $100,000 per year, which in turn would reduce the municipality’s costs by about $35,000 per year, or $175,000 over the current five-year contract.
The money would be returned to municipal coffers, however, and would have no direct impact to taxpayers.
The four-day system has already been put in place in East Hants and Cumberland counties, he said, and the response to date has been “excellent” from those areas.
Another advantage to the system, Traver said, is that with six collection trucks working in a given area on the same day, if someone’s pickup is missed, it would be a simple task to back track to get it.
“The beauty is when people do put out late collections,” he said, “it’s easier for us to go back.”
If council approves the proposal, Traver said he would like to see the new system in place by April.
