For seven blissful years we’ve enjoyed having steady garbage pick-up rates, and one of the lowest rates in the Seattle area. (See the rate chart below)

Unfortunately, our nice deal with Waste Management is expiring, and garbage haulers are pushing on us hard to get the rates back up to market levels.

Renton has responded by looking at ways we might mitigate the rate increases through increased recycling efforts, and less frequent pick-up service of some waste streams. All of us on council are concerned about rates; but we have had a variety of different thoughts about how to deal with them.There are many facets to the debate (rates, frequency, fairness, safety, health issues, environmental issues), and many of us on council have revealed a fair amount of passion on the issue at one time or another.

After much debate, brainstorming, and gnashing of teeth, we are very close to reaching a decision point.

The Renton Reporter ran a story on the topic in the last edition. Click here for the article.

As the story explains, “The new rates will vary among residences. But for the largest single residential category – known as one-can service – the monthly rate will go from $13.44 a month to $18.41 a month.”

It’s important to understand that along with this 5 dollar rate increase, your single-can service is only going to get picked up once every two weeks. To avoid a home trash crisis (and be a good steward), you will need to put all of your organic trash into the “expanded yard waste” toter that will be supplied to you. I call it expanded, because it will now be the correct place to put food scraps, and cardboard and paper that is tainted by food. So your spoiled food, paper plates, cheesy pizza boxes, your Chinese food boxes, and your paper meat packaging would go in this toter (along with your yard clippings, old flowers, and other greenery).

A third toter will be supplied for collecting all the remainder of your recycling (clean paper, cardboard, cans, bottles, plastics), and in a simplification, none of this will have to be sorted any more.

All of this recycling will not leave too much stuff that will have to go into the traditional garbage stream. Hence, city experts believe this should make it possible for most single can homes to move to the 35 gallon toter that is picked up every two weeks.

The five dollar increase will be noticeable however, and there appears to be nothing we can do about it. If you look at the chart below, you can see this still keeps us much cheaper than many other jurisdictions.

Unfortunately, the rates are also going up for two-can users, commercial users, and min-can users. Citizens who are mini-can users will see a large percentage increase in their bill under the contract, as the cost for their service is just not much different than the cost of the next-size-up toter. We could think about subsidizing this further, but then it shifts costs upward on the other users who are already feeling a pinch.

Lastly, we had to decide between a seven year fixed-rate contract at an even higher rate, or to agree to a formula for rate increases over the life of the contract. (We had this choice seven years ago, and chose the seven-year fixed-rate.)

This time, the fixed rate is much too high, because it is so speculative given inflation and oil-price worries. The garbage haulers want a lot of money up front if they are going to take all the risk in future years, given the state of the economy.

City staff have tried to mitigate future rate increases, by creating some ways we can keep the rates down. One way we can do this is by diverting our waste streams into recycling. The new contract, the hauler wil actually set our rates by the actual tonnage transported to the transfer station. If this tonnage is reduced, our year-over-year rates will be credited by this savings. The numbers get complicated, but the bottom line is that if you put one hundred pounds of rubbish into recycling instead of the trash, that 100 pounds of rubbish will save Renton rate-payers about (100 pounds) X 75 (dollars/ton) /(2000 pounds/ton) = $3.75. This $3.75, along with the savings from all the other households, could be significant in helping off-set inflationary costs of fuel and labor in our contract…and will help us minimize future-year rate increases.

There are no perfect answers, and I’m sorry we have to see a rate increase, but there are a few pieces of good news. Everyone will get wheeled toters form Waste Management, with attached lids, which will make your cans and neighborhood more orderly. And the extra recycling, which is included in the cost of the program, is the environmentally sound thing to do.

As always, please feel free to leave your comments.

Click here for Seattle Times story about local garbage rates

Click here to see how some local families reduced their garbage and increased their recycling.

Click here to see the final report from the garbage pilot program conducted last spring.