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Why Did We Change the Business Rates?Business rates for trash and recycling have changed to accomplish old and new City goals for diversion. These rates have been approved by the City Council. The new rates have been designed to accomplish three primary goals:
Foodscraps collection is now to business customers. There is a new yellow container in which businesses can separate foodscraps for composting. Please see the new Business Foodscraps Composting webpage to find out all the details on this program. The City goal is for recycling, foodscraps, greenwaste to comprise 66% of the waste. Curently, Victoria Court Mall has achieved 66% diversion from recycling alone. Approximately 50 businesses use one trash and two recycling dumpsters that are picked up daily. The switch from no diversion to 66% saves the managment over $13,000 per year. It's time to rethink trash as not simply an inevitable cost of doing business, but instead as valuable resources in the wrong container. Although current rates offer a discount for recycling, the new rates increase the savings to inspire more businesses to maximize recycling. The Utility Bill format has also changed, so that business owners can see exactly how much each container costs. This will allow businesses to evaluate the economic benefits of replacing some of the trash service with recycling, foodscraps composting, or greenwaste. See the Check Out the New Bill Format section to see how the new bill provides more information about costs. Explanation of Changes and EffectsThe new rates incorporate the following changes:
Dumpster rentals tend to discourage people from adding containers for recycling and greenwaste because more containers means higher rental costs. In the new rate structure, the rentals have been absorbed into the price of service to encourage people to have more containers on site, collected less frequently. Absorbed rentals will also lower costs on all services for customers with small dumpsters or once or twice per week service. Currently, a customer with a 2yd3 (cubic yard) trash dumpster collected once per week pays one third of the cost in rental fees. Elimination of rentals will distribute costs more fairly. Frequent collection is very expensive to provide to customers, and it also means more trucks on the streets, more air pollution, and more noise in the early mornings. The proposed rates charge more to collect a 2yd3 dumpster twice per week than a 4yd3 dumpster once per week although they contain the same amount of trash. Since it costs the haulers almost double to pick up the waste twice per week, a small portion of this cost is being passed on to the customer to encourage efficient collection. In the proposed rates, diversion services will cost less and trash will increase. This will provide all businesses with greater opportunities to reduce their bill from current levels through recycling, greenwaste, and foodscraps composting. In general, customers who divert (through recycling, greenwaste, or foodscraps) at least 50% of their waste will see their bills decrease. Customers who divert less than 50% will see an increase. This is not true for every single customer at every service level, but is generally true for the majority. Virtually all customers will be able to reduce their bills by diverting waste. The front page of your Utility Bill has a pie chart that shows how much you are diverting. Use this as a guide to see if you might need additional diversion. Increasing diversion now will save you money today under the current rate structure. The City's Commercial Recycling and Composting Specialists will be happy to help your business start saving money by assisting you in the transition to more diverison. The proposed rates do not provide 96 gallons of free recycling or greenwaste to customers with trash dumspters. Generally speaking, if you have a trash dumpster, you will need a recycling dumpster in order to have enough capacity to recycle 50% of your waste. Also cardboard boxes do not fit well in recycling carts and tend to get thrown in the trash dumpster. However, recycling will be so much less expensive than current rates, that dumpster customers will save more money than ever by recycling. How to Save Money Under the Proposed (or current) Rate StructureThere are several steps you can take to reduce your waste bill. Go through this step by step procedure to whittle down the amount of trash (and your bill). You don't have to wait until the rates change since these steps can reduce your bill now as well. Right-Size Your Containers Reduce Collection Frequency Add Diversion Services If you have a food-serving business, adding a foodscraps bin will be the easiest way to divert some of your trash into the less expensive containers. See the Business Foodscraps Composting page for a complete program description. Recycling today includes far more materials than just a few cans and newspapers. In the large metal recycling dumpsters, you can even recycle wood furniture and pallets (not in carts or cans). Offices can recycle about 80% of the waste produced and save money doing it. A small recycling cart next to a large trash dumpster won't save you money. A large recycling dumpster will. See the Recycle at Work section to start or increase recycling at your business. If your business produces flower or plant trimmings, landscaping prunings, or other plant material, get a greenwaste bin. Call your hauler to change service, or call one of our Commercial Recycling Specialists for help.
Share with the Neighbors Change from a Dumpster to Carts Let's replace half of the trash with recycling Trash - 2 carts picked up 2 times per week = 4 carts per week Recycling - 4 carts picked up 1 times per week = 4 carts per week A total of 6 carts will probably fit into the enclosure. Split Dumpsters Take a look at the proposed new bill and compare it to the current bill. The changes are on the second page. Each container is listed with the number of containers, the number of pickups per week, and the share. The share is used when two or more businesses are sharing dumpsters. If the share is 50%, the customer is charged for half of the container costs. Share can be any percentage. Proposed Rate Sheet for Business Customers Download the Proposed Business Rate Sheet. All prices are monthly. Extra pickup for dumpsters is charged when the customer requests an additional pickup between regular service days. Extra pickup for carts and cans is simply an additional bag or container picked up on the regular service day. If you would like to calculate your bill based on the proposed rates, please use the easy Online Bill Calculator in the next section.
The front page of your Utility Bill lists your current containers, number of containers, and collection frequency as shown in the highlighted area at right. Input this information into the Online Bill Calculator to see what your costs will be. When finished, you can print the results for reference. You can also use the bottom section of the calculator to experiment with changing containers. Replace some of your trash with diversion services (recycling, greenwaste, or foodscraps) and watch your bill decrease. You must keep the total weekly volume of waste the same because diversion is simply at matter of putting some material that is currently in your trash bin in one of the diversion bins. Look through the following examples on how to replace trash with diversion. Sample Calculation 1: replacing trash service with foodscraps service The following is the Utility Bill detail from the above bill. Follow this procedure to calculate the effect of reducing trash by adding a foodscraps dumpster. The trash container size is 4yd3, and the frequency is 6 times per week (6x/wk). Each pickup is 4yd3 of trash. Let's replace one of the trash pickups with a foodscraps pickup. This means that we are reducing the trash by 4yd3, and therefore need to add 4yd3 of foodscraps. Since the maximum size for a foodscraps dumpster is 2yd3 (it gets heavy), the foodscraps dumpster must be picked up twice per week to amount to 4yd3. The new container mix looks like this:
Input this information into the bottom section of the Online Bill Calculator to compare what this customer will pay when the new rates take effect, with what he could be paying if he diverts more material from the trash into the foodscraps bin. If this seems too complicated, call the Commerical Recycling and Composting Specialists and they can do the calculations for you. Sample Calculation 2: replacing multiple trash cans with recycling cans This customer could probably increase recycling since she is at less than 50% diversion. Notice that although she has the same number of trash and recycling cans, the trash is collected three times as often.
We can reduce the trash either by lowering the number of cans, or by reducing the frequency. It is more cost-effective to reduce frequency. Let's try to get the recycling to 50% by allotting the same number of containers and the same frequency to recycling as trash. If the both the trash and recycling are collected twice per week, this will be the case. The new container mix looks like this:
Input this information into the bottom section of the Online Bill Calculator to compare what this customer will pay when the new rates take effect, with what she could be paying if she diverts more material from the trash cans into the recycling cans. If you hate math, stop here. If you are just geting started, take it to the next level. We can reduce the frequency from twice per week to once per week to lower costs even more. Start by figuring out the total amount of cans collected per week. Total recycling cans collected per week = number of cans x number of pickups per week = 6 x 2 = 12 Total trash cans collected per week = number of cans x number of pickups per week = 6 x 2 = 12 Since we don't have enough space for 24 cans picked up once per week, we can change to the more space-efficient carts. The largest cart is 96 gallons (equal to three 32 gallon cans), and takes up only slightly more space than a can. If we replace all of the cans with carts, we can reduce the frequency to once per week without any additional space required. Here's the math 12 recycling cans per week ÷ 3 cans/cart = 4 carts per week 12 trash cans per week ÷ 3 cans/cart = 4 carts per week The more efficient container mix will look with this.
We now have a total of 8 carts wwhich will fit into the space formerly occupied by a total of 12 cans. Eager for more? Buy yourself one of those Mensa puzzle books. We need to move on. Attend an Informational Meeting, Provide Input, or Ask Questions We want to hear from you, the business owners and managers about the proposed changes. The City will present information at four public meetings, two for restaurants and other food-serving businesses (with a focus on the foodscraps program), and two for all businesses. City staff will present the proposed changes, answer questions, and allow the business community to provide feedback. Meetings will take place at the Downtown Public Library in the Faulkner Gallery (40 E Anapamu St) or at the Public Works Building in the David Gebhard Public Meeting Room (630 Garden Street) You can attend these workshops or alternatively, provide input or ask questions by email. All emails received will be made available to City Councilmembers. Food-Serving Businesses (including hospitals and schools): Monday, April 20th at 9:00 a.m. at the Library and Tuesday, May 19 th at 9:00 a.m. at the Public Works Building All Businesses : Tuesday, April 28th, at 8:00 a.m. at the at the Library and Thursday, May 14 th at 10:00 a.m. at the Public Works Building For a quick look the subjects covered in the meeting, preview the presentation. You need PowerPoint to see it, and if you do not have it, download the viewer. |
Recycling has been available to businesses for years, but many business either don't have recycling, or have a very small amount. You can see in the chart at right that a relatively small amount of business waste makes its way into the recycling or greenwaste bins. That means that our local landfill is filling up with too much garbage, and siting a new landfill or other waste facility will cost multiple millions of dollars that will be passed on to rate payers. Recycling and composting are very cost-effective ways of extending the life of the landfill. 
