Recycling goes single stream

COEUR d'ALENE - The city of Coeur d'Alene is making the leap to single-stream recycling. And it hopes the rest of the region follows its lead. "We've thrown our hat in the ring," said Roger Saterfiel, Kootenai County Solid Waste director. "We've said, 'yes, we support this. This is the direction we want to go.'"

COEUR d'ALENE - The city of Coeur d'Alene is making the leap to single-stream recycling.

And it hopes the rest of the region follows its lead.

"We've thrown our hat in the ring," said Roger Saterfiel, Kootenai County Solid Waste director. "We've said, 'yes, we support this. This is the direction we want to go.'"

So come October, those blue bins that hold your recycling will be gone, replaced by 64-gallon carts for each of Coeur d'Alene's 15,000 or so homes.

Those bigger carts will handle double the content, too, allowing residents to recycle previously un-recyclable goods, including office paper and cardboard of any size.

The long-term goal is to get the entire region to switch from curbside recycling to single stream, beefing up recyclable items from seven to 15 different types of materials. Those materials would be processed at a material recovery facility that Spokane is looking to recruit to the region sometime in the future.

In the meantime, Coeur d'Alene is saying it's on board with the switch, proposing to lock up a six-year extension with its garbage and recycling provider, Waste Management.

"We're comfortable with the proposal," said Troy Tymesen, city finance director, on the terms of the contract extension. "Now, we can get single-stream recycling up and running."

The city's 10-year contract with Waste Management is set to expire this year. The finance department wants to add two, three-year extensions to the roughly $2.7 million per-year-deal, since Waste Management offered to add the single stream recycling service at the standard annual increase between 1.5 to 2.75 percent.

As part of the agreement, Waste Management will pay $750,000 for the 15,000 carts.

It would not need additional trucks, as their current fleet could handle the load. It would include commercial pick ups as well.

When the carts arrive this fall, residents won't be required to sort their recyclables. Instead they can toss all types of paper, cardboard and plastic into it like a garbage can.

Neither glass nor plastic bags will be accepted, however, and the pick-up would move to every other week instead of weekly.

Garbage collection would remain weekly.

Residents won't see a spike in service costs, either, Tymesen said, while recycling double the items will reduce stress - and costs - on the Fighting Creek Landfill.

It costs $450,000 to develop an acre of landfill and another $190,000 to close it once it's filled, and single stream could reduce waste there 30 percent to 50 percent.

Coeur d'Alene is the first in the county to make the switch.

By extending the contract with Waste Management to include single-stream services, the partners hope others follow suit.

"We're hoping now it would spread across the area," Saterfiel said.

Suzanne Tresko, of the Spokane regional solid waste system, said they have requests for proposals for companies to locate a material collection facility to the region. Details on how much it would cost aren't defined, but such a facility would require regional participation.

In the meantime, Bluebird Recycling in Coeur d'Alene would handle the loads.

The contract, which expires this summer, is not being opened up to bid since the sides agreed to the terms.

Included in the contract is Kootenai County - familiar with garbage collection - as an overseer to offer advice to the city. With two or more municipalities involved, it made the contract a joint powers agreement. Joint powers agreements are excluded from any competitive bidding process by state code.

Tymesen said he didn't expect an open bid would have yielded a cheaper price, since the service requirements increased, the cost of bins was included and Waste Management agreed to the 1.5 percent to 2.75 percent increase cap, which is lower than many would offer.

Phil Damiano, Coeur d'Alene Garbage general manager, said an open bid could have netted a cheaper service, but nobody will ever know.

Damiano told the city several months ago it should let other companies bid for the service since it hasn't been bid on since 1988.

"To be honest, that's not that bad of a deal," he said of the extension, adding that his company would have offered a bid. "I would have loved to see it go to competitive bid because I think 22 years is too long."

The contract will go before the City Council at 6 p.m. April 6 in the Community Room of the Coeur d'Alene Public Library.

Saterfiel said he hopes the ease of single stream recycling will encourage more people to do it. In Boise, which has single-stream, their participation rate is 94 percent. Coeur d'Alene's is 34 percent now.

"That's the neat thing about this," he said. "It's so convenient."