Waste Management gathers info on Fairfield’s preferred trash cart size

FAIRFIELD – A representative of Waste Management fielded questions from the public on Thursday about a new trash and recycling contract that would give every household in town a trash cart similar to their recycling cart.

The Fairfield City Council had the chance to approve the new contract in December but opted instead to hold a couple of public forums on the issue in January due to a disagreement on the appropriate size of the trash cart. Residents’ recycling carts hold 96 gallons, and Waste Management is offering to supply every household with a 96-gallon wheeled trash cart, or the next size down which is a 65-gallon wheeled cart.

The first forum was held Jan. 16 at the Fairfield Public Library, where Waste Management representative Ammon Taylor answered questions from the public, several of which revolved around why the trash carts couldn’t be smaller for those households that produce little trash. One woman said that even a 65-gallon cart is much larger than she needs, and hoped Waste Management could offer a 48-gallon or 32-gallon option.

Taylor said there are a few problems with those smaller carts that make them infeasible. Suppliers don’t stock them in the quantities that WM needs, and apart from that, they’re so small that sometimes they slip through the mechanical arms of the garbage truck and get compacted with the rest of the trash.

“It happens often enough that it gets expensive,” he said.

Furthermore, Taylor said it would not be possible to give each household a different size of cart. He said the garbage truck has to be calibrated to pick up one size or the other. That’s why WM was giving Fairfield the option to choose between 96- and 65-gallon carts, but the city had to pick one or the other.

Taylor clarified that WM was willing to make some concessions on cart options by allowing the city’s homeownership associations (HOAs) to have a different size cart than the rest of town, after representatives of two HOAs in Fairfield argued that senior citizens prefer smaller carts. Taylor said he would ask his company if it would consider stocking the 48-gallon option just for HOAs, but he did think it was doubtful. He said the 48-gallon option was not in high demand and therefore hard to obtain.

“I think if we polled the whole town, most people would go with the 96-gallon cart,” he said.

As a compromise, Fairfield Mayor Connie Boyer suggested that the HOAs could get 96-gallon carts which would permanently stay near the road, so that residents would not have to wheel them back and forth on trash day.

Waste Management’s proposal to the city would raise trash and recycle rates to $22.27 per month. That figure includes the trash cart that residents would receive. Some residents are renting a trash cart from WM, and Taylor said those arrangements would cease since WM would no longer charge a separate rental fee. The monthly bill would cover picking up trash every week, picking up recycling every other week, and picking up one bulk item once per month.

Taylor said that providing a trash cart to every household will actually save WM money through lower labor costs. The company is moving away from its current practice of having an employee exit the garbage truck to manually pick up garbage bags. It wants the garbage truck driver to be able to drive around town and pick up all trash carts with a mechanical arm so they never have to leave the vehicle. He said this change to working conditions will allow WM to stay competitive in hiring.

The next public forum on the proposed contract with WM will be at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 27, just before the council’s meeting that evening at 7 p.m.

Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com

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