Highland Heights Unsure of Route to Take With Recycling

officials know they want a new garbage contract, they just don't know what option to take.

At a special meeting on Tuesday, City Council gave Mayor Scott Coleman the OK to opt out of the final two years of the current contract because new bids will save at least $154,000 in the first year and $203,000 in the second.

The new deal will be with the same company, now known as Kimble, and residents will be provided with 96-gallon trash containers with wheels. They will be able to request smaller containers, if desired, or could decide not to use them at all. Regardless, the contract does not set limits on how much would be collected, so residents could also bag trash if the containers were full.

The question before council is whether to have similar 64-gallon carts for recycling or to keep the same 18-gallon recycling bins that are being used.

Service Director Thom Evans said going with the recycling carts would cost the city 20 cents more a month per home. However, if the city went with collection every two weeks instead of weekly, it would actually be $32,000 a year cheaper to have the recycling carts instead of the current bins.

"I can see what might happen, residents might be confused," Council President Cathy Murphy said about every other week collection of recyclables.

An advantage to the carts is that residents would be able to combine all materials – paper, plastic, aluminum, cardboard – together instead of tying up magazines separately or cutting cardboard into 2-foot-by-2-foot sections.

But the downside is that everything would have to be in the carts to be recycled – residents could not use the bins, blue bags or bundle papers separately. And people may not have room in their garages for both garbage and recycling carts, Mayor Scott Coleman noted.

"I think the only way to recycle is to use the cart," he said.

Evans said that the city can expect recycling to increase by at least 10 percent by switching to the carts. While removing that amount from the garbage being collected will not save the city money now, it could down the line, he said.

"Five years from now, if we could have less rubbish and more recycling there would be savings on that (in the next contract)," Evans said.