City looks at shift to mandatory curbside recycling
The city of Whitefish’s central recycling site is near the corner of Columbia Avenue and Railway Street.
Whitefish is examining the potential for a mandatory curbside recycling program for the community.
North Valley Refuse, which is the city’s solid waste contractor, currently provides recycling services at a centralized site at Columbia Avenue and Railway Street, but the city says that service isn’t working as well as it would like. It also offers voluntary curbside service.
“Although this centralized site has provided a convenient location, as well as increased capacity for recycled materials, the site is overrun during peak demand periods — primarily weekends and holidays,” Public Works Director Craig Workman said. “Although the issue primarily involves cardboard, it’s also common for garbage to be dumped at the site.”
The centralized recycling site opened in January 2016 on the city’s snow lot and the city phased out its satellite recycling sites around the city. Containers at the central site have often become overfilled and cardboard is routinely stacked beside collection containers.
Workman said the city is hoping the switch to curbside recycling only would provide a solution.
“We want to look at collection costs and see what it would be like for a Whitefish resident,” he said. “Our intention is to try this out for one year.” Whitefish City Council authorized to go out for request for proposals to allow submissions to the city for curbside service for residential customers. The city envisions recycle pickup on an every other week basis on the same day as garbage collection and collected from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Councilor Jen Frandsen said she wanted to know how the switch to curbside would impact residents. She asked city staff to return with that information when proposals for the service come forward.
“I want to know how much North Valley Refuge is charging for the central site and how much customers bills would change as a result of ending that,” she said. “I’m concerned about adding an additional charge to residents if we don’t get some of that back from what is charged now.”
The service is planned to operate using resident provided containers for recycling and items would have to be separated into three separate containers — one for paper, one for plastic and metal, and one for cardboard.
Councilor Andy Feury said he would like to see if service can be provided with “single stream” or all recyclables placed in one collection container.
“Most cities that have systems where you separate are not nearly as effective,” he said.
Mayor John Muhlfeld said it would be short sited of the city to not keep the central site downtown.
“When we did narrow down, we did hear from businesses that it was an inconvenience to have one site and to eliminate the site, there needs to be some account for that,” he said.
Workman said the city could look at retaining the central site strictly for commercial use. One of the largest issues at the site is that cardboard is not flattened and it appears that commercial users are better at making sure that happens with the cardboard, he noted.