Trash and bulk items placed on a curb in Elkton for Waste Management to pick up.
Infographic explaining the basics of recycling provided by Waste Management.
Trash and bulk items placed on a curb in Elkton for Waste Management to pick up.
Infographic explaining the basics of recycling provided by Waste Management.
ELKTON — Households in the Town of Elkton weekly generate over 17 pounds of garbage more than the average, according to Waste Management officials. In a bid to promote residents to actively recycle, the Elkton Department of Public Works and Waste Management are looking to convert trash and recycling pickup services to same day pickups.
The initiative is part of a proposed plan to increase efficiency without increasing costs of service for Elkton residents.
The plan comes in response to the strain on resources WM has been facing due to rising costs due to inflation and Elkton’s large amounts of trash. The average household in Elkton accumulates 47.19 pounds of trash per week — that is 17.19 pounds more than the 30 pound industry standard in weekly trash disposal. The excess trash costs the town of Elkton an additional $162,771.08 a year to properly dispose of.
“Waste Management comes across a lot of bulk items like couches and as a trash collector, when you have big items, cans, and numerous bags, it is a strain on manpower and resources,” said Director of Public Works Dan Handley. “We then get backed up and there’s other areas that end up not being addressed and it is not fair to residents so Waste Management looked at the overall issue and is changing the number of days from two to three for pick ups, and doing both trash and recycling at the same time to keep the accumulation low.”
WM currently provides trash pickup Mondays and Tuesdays, and recycling pick up on Thursdays and Fridays running six trucks for trash pick up and three trucks for recycling. The proposed plan by WM looks to provide trash and recycling pick up on the same days: Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. WM officials say that the new service schedule would reduce claims of missed collection and be more convenient for residents.
Another contributing factor to Elkton’s waste management issues is poor recycling habits. Elkton households collect a weekly average of 5.5 pounds of recycling, which is 4.5 pounds below the industry standard of 10 pounds. Elkton’s poor recycling habits have denied the town $29,125.98 of potential annual savings. Between the extra recycling and waste disposal costs, Elkton spends a total of $191,897.06 annually on trash disposal.
“There is a great deal of confusion and misconception about recycling,” said Paul Beane, the Public Sector Services Representative for Waste Management. “We need to take multiple approaches to this through support from the local government to educate the public on recycling and what is actually recyclable.”
A simple way to understand what is recyclable versus what is not recyclable is through what WM calls the “ick factor,” if something is dirty, do not recycle it without cleaning it first. An example would be jars and empty milk jugs, they need to be rinsed out before being recycled or they will be considered contaminated and added to landfill trash instead of recycling.
“Contamination in the recycling stream is a huge problem in the industry and a huge problem for the environment,” said Waste Management Manager of Communications John Hambrose. “When the people down the street have a clean load of recycling and the next three houses have trash in their recycling, it is very possible that the clean recycling will end up in the landfill because of contamination from the other houses.”
It currently costs WM and DPW $79-per-ton to dispose of trash in Cecil County, as opposed to the $22 it would cost for one ton of recycling.
“We, the Town of Elkton and Waste Management have to do a better job on marketing what the do’s and don’ts are with recycling and I feel pretty comfortable that we are well equipped to do so,” said Elkton Town Mayor, Robert Alt. “I think this is going to be a good thing for all.”
Alt says the town will look to include recycling and trash containers in the bid price when the current contract with WM expires, issuing 96g recycling and trash containers to households. Alt also noted that if the town is able to cut back the excess spending associated with waste disposal, that money would be used to buy trash and recycling bins for all residents.
According to officials, WM is currently evaluating ways to implement limits on the amount of bulk items residents can put out for pick up. During a town hall meeting, it was proposed that WM would only allow residents to dispose of one bulk item per month through WM pickup services and additional items would have a fee associated with them. WM and DPW continue to work on other solutions to the issue and a final decision has yet to be made.
“The trash and recycling aren’t really restrictive, we are worried about the bulk items because that is the key and the people see that,” said Handley. “If we know what’s going to be out for the month, that’s very efficient rather than different bulk items out every week that we don’t know about.”
Elkton residents currently pay $36 on a quarterly basis which equates to $12 a month for trash and recycling services – the national average is between $20 and $80 a month for trash and recycling service.
“The idea is to avoid any sort of cost increase while continuing to provide top of the line service, but in an efficient manner,” said Beane. “We charge far below industry standards and, currently, we pick up recycling every week as well as literally everything at the curb so we are providing far above industry standard service at below industry standard pricing.”
WM plans on implementing its new plan in November 2022.
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