M Focus on: Waste & Recycling
Municipalities move to automated trash collection By DENISE FEDOROW | The Municipal
More and more cities and towns are making the switch to automated trash collection and doing so for a variety of reasons — current price decreases and labor issues among them. Some trash collection is performed by city employees while others are contracted out. For Cleveland Heights, Ohio, it had gotten to the point where the equipment needed to be replaced so some decision had to be made. According to Public Works Director Collette Clinkscale, the trucks had gotten so bad they couldn’t make the 80-mile one-way trip to the landfill in Shiloh, Ohio, so whether the city automated or not, something had to be done in order for operations to continue. “We were at the point in the sanitation department where we needed to replace equipment — we were getting complaints from residents,” she said, adding the previous 20 THE MUNICIPAL | AUGUST 2021
public works director did a rate study on a couple of occasions to see what it would take but never implemented anything. The city council also appointed a task force made up of members of the community. They went to the sanitation department to see what it takes to pick up trash manually. They also looked at whether they should continue to do it manually, try automation or privatize and contract out the trash collection. “All those options were looked at,” she said. Speakers were brought in for the task force. Some were people from surrounding
ABOVE: Trash bins lined up along a street in Bangor, Maine, wait to be picked up by an ASL automated side-load trash truck. The city made the move to automated trash collection last fall. (Photo provided by city of Bangor/photo by Jim Dunning)
communities to talk about how they transitioned to automation. The task force also listened to speakers from waste companies, who shared what is going on in the industry. Clinkscale said they analyzed and studied the information for about seven to eight months. Before the task force’s work, the city had conducted another rate analysis to determine the cost to transition, which included a route study. “The cost to transition to automation as part of the rate analysis helped determine what the new rate should be,” she said. “The new
