Curbside Recycling Comes to Residents This October

You'll soon be able to have your recyclables — to include colored glass — picked up with your curbside waste, at no additional cost to residents.

Starting this October, your recyclables may be mixed in a single, rolling bin (that the city will issue to you) and a contractor will pick it up once a week on the same day as your yard debris and bulk materials, staff told officials during a workshop last week. 

Valerie Brown, sustainability coordinator, told officials that cartons, cardboard and colored glass will be added to the list of accepted materials. 

The recycle drop-off center at Highlander Park will be phased out, Brown says.

The staff's plan to add recycling for residents is still in planning stages. It will need official approval from the commission before it is rolled out.

Regular, twice-a-week garbage pickup would stay the same for residents, but the move is part of a larger goal to scale it down to one day a week.

Solid waste personnel believe the new recycling option will cause the volume of residents' regular garbage to decrease, thus alleviating the need for a second pickup day.

"We want residents to see that," Brown said. "And that's one of the important things about when I started going out to homeowners associations or different meetings to show them, 'look how you can fill this container, and what's left? OK, the kitty litter, the diapers and maybe some food scraps.' That's pretty much it." 

Solid waste personnel will monitor residents' curbside waste over the fiscal year to see if the theory holds true, and said they foresee possibly adjusting to a one-day-a-week trash pickup in October 2013, but no plans for it are in place. 

The recent move to once-per-week pickup of yard waste and bulk debris saved the city an estimated $132,000 a year, Brown said.

For more information, call the Solid Waste Division at 727-298-3215.

Editor's note: This story was updated with clarifying information Tuesday, May 1, 2012, at 12:24 p.m.