From Division of Local Services June 2008 Cities and Towns PDF, State Of Massachusetts:
Northampton recycling rates: 2006-47%, 2005-45%, 2004-54%.
I offer the following as an example of an innovative idea on how waste management can be approached. While this model might not be appropriate for Northampton, the formation of a landfill citizens advisory committee or working group could lay the ground work for regional collaboration that goes beyond other municipalities and commercial haulers simply trucking refuse into Northampton:
Mayors of Braintree, Weymouth and Quincy collaborate for savings: Solid Waste and Recycling Initiative
by Jeffrey Kunz, Recycling Committee, Town of Braintree
For the first time, South Shore communities have worked together in an initiative to jointly award a contract to one vendor for curbside collection for their three communities. Quincy, Weymouth and Braintrees’ multiparty contract with Capitol Waste Services takes effect this July. It is a five-year contract with two two-year extensions for a total of nine years.
The mayors of the three communities felt strongly that increased purchasing power could translate into cost savings for all three communities and could lay the groundwork for future additional collaborations. Additionally, the communities hope to eventually apply for grants specifically targeted to multi-town projects in waste reduction via the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The expectation was that by exploring all avenues, new programs, and improving management practices we could address the ever-escalating cost of providing and managing municipal solid waste services.
Solid waste management has become a challenge for all municipal budgets due to fewer disposal facilities, increased regulations, and excessive consumerism coupled with a lack of recycling resulting in ever-increasing costs and a increased concern for the environmental impacts.
By combining forces in a collaborative manner, the municipalities hoped to realize an economy of scale savings, as compared to going out to bid individually. Quincy, with 36,400 households served by municipal waste services has the largest base. However, when Braintree and Weymouth are added, there are 62,950 households to be served (9,600 in Braintree and 16,950 households in Weymouth): that represents a 42 percent increase in purchasing power. It was expected that potential bidders would sharpen their pencils in order to obtain a long-term contract with three good-sized municipalities. Also, due to the security of having such a large customer base with a long-term contract, the vendor would realize improved efficiency in collection and equipment purchasing. Those efficiencies for the vendor transferred into savings for the municipalities in response to the communities’ request for contract proposals. Our expectations were met: first year savings are in the 3-5 percent range below previously anticipated 2009 costs!
Costs for FY09 will actually be less than this past year’s costs and will avoid the anticipated 7-10 percent industry guidelines for communities coming off long-term contracts because of the hard work and purchasing power of the alliance. Due to the single stream recycling, recycling revenue is expected to increase each year. Trash disposal fees are also anticipated to decrease as increased recycling results in decreased trash tonnage. We are hoping to achieve a 10-15 percent reduction in trash tonnage the first year, and an additional 5-10 percent the next two to three years. Even a 10 percent reduction in trash is equivalent to a $75,000 savings each year for Braintree alone.
The services of an experienced, municipal solid waste consultant were critical to the process, as our three mayors recognized that a one to two year process was going to be compressed into three months. The decision to hire Rosemary Nolan, a Quincy Department of Public Works retiree was the key to this effort. Additionally, a task force made up of representatives of the three municipalities met one to two times per week with Nolan to insure each com munity’s needs were integrated into the RFP and that synergies could be realized through discussion and information exchanges a valuable outcome for this effort and any to follow.
Key Process Points:
The RFP formatting was done with a user-friendly approach. Many times, volumes of pages have to be gone through before finding the basics of the RFP scattered throughout the document.
We organized the RFP so that key issues were in the lead section vendors knew what was expected of them during their preparation of the RFP response and what each proposal needed to contain along with the pricing.
A pricing format and a two-sided pricing sheet for each municipality was provided so that the vendors could just fill in the pricing on the lines provided next to each service category. This ensured that all responses would be consistent and made evaluating the pricing more transparent while providing an equal playing field.
Outreach/sponsorship from the vendor to the communities was included, in order to have the means of sustaining outreach efforts to the schools and residents to achieve our goals of reducing trash tonnage, and thus, reducing costs.
Route supervision, by the vendor, was addressed as an area where the three communities might possibly share one route supervisor instead of having two or three for the three communities as is the current situation. The savings of one salary by the vendor could be applied toward a municipal solid waste coordinator to assist all three towns in communicating with the vendor and ensuring the proper outreach and curb-side monitoring and enforcement takes place. It was strongly felt that without daily supervision on behalf of the communities, achieving goals and sustain-ability was not possible.
One concept of the new recycling program included in the RFP is single stream recycling. Single stream recycling eliminates the need for residents to sort paper or cardboard from all the other items that are recycled.
During the first year of the new contract, the municipalities can do a modified single stream program that would allow residents to utilize one of their current trash containers for recycling, along with their recycling bin. The municipalities would supply a wrap-around-con tainer-sticker and an information sheet on single stream recycling to each household. This would serve our goal of converting to single stream, and immediately reduce trash tonnage fees. During the first year, municipalities would have time to research corporate grants for recycling containers. DEP grants occur in August wherein application could be made for funding to offset the larger container cost. Also, the cost savings from lowering disposal costs over 12 months, through the modified single stream recycling, could be used to assist in funding larger 96-gallon containers. From the time the contract is awarded to the new contract implementation date, there is a three-month period for outreach to the public relative to single stream to ensure a maximum comfort level with residents.
For more information please contact Rosemary Nolan at RNolan@brain treema.gov.
