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Neighbor News

Does City of Lake Forest not want residents recycling organic waste?

Does City of Lake Forest not want residents recycling organic waste?

Does City of Lake Forest not want residents recycling organic waste?

Apparently not.
Recently, the city approved new rates and service for residents. It will be effective July 2025.
One notable change was charging extra for an additional green waste cart. Previously, the additional cart was included in the service fee.
The base monthly rate for trash service will be $25.02.
The cost for the additional organics cart is $6.76 or $81.12 annually, plus taxes or whatever fees are associated with the upcharge.
Personally, I would like to use the extra money for other stuff than trash.
What I find amazing, in a world where more people are concerned with the environment that the city and CRR go out of their way to discourage recycling of the one waste item that can be recycled into ground cover/mulch. So now when one cart is full, residents will have to put extra into the normal trash cart.
The materials recycling container still allows for 2 carts to be included in the base fee to fill up 2 of those every week must mean a lot of online orders or boxes are not flattened. And most of the materials in the recycling cart probably will end up in the landfill as they cannot be recycled for various reasons. Heck, in my neighborhood the EXACT same trash truck picks up both the trash and the materials recycling carts.

I wish to congratulate the city on the backward planning which will invariably result in more green waste going into the landfill. Landfill in Irvine is the 9th largest in the USA for a good reason. Cities like Lake Forest and CR&R Environmental Services lead by example, sometimes a bad example like this.

Anyone in Lake Forest get the weird survey mailer?
It was not much of a survey, as it was asking about changes I would like to make to my service, but it states I have to call their customer service to make changes to my account.?
If they want to save on waste, maybe the carts provided should be of higher quality and not break so quickly. The last recycling cart I had replaced because it was broken and it was replaced with a new one already cracked and broken to save me time waiting or it to break from usage. Just about every cart on my street is cracked and broken.

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