Jan 172012
If less expensive recycling pick-up will create a more robust system, then progress is being made. The City recently announced that its experiment with competitive bidding for blue bin collection had reduced its costs by $1M in one quarter alone. Each cart, by the way, costs between $3.75 and $2.70 to service. Read the press release here.
2 Responses to “What I’m Loving: Reducing Recycling Costs”
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This is great! However, I do have a cynical concern – once the city infrastructure is abandonned because the cost for private pick-up appears to be so much less than what the city costs are, the private company will start raising its rates. This is a highly competitive business and without constant vigilence, the rates will likely increase beyond the city costs as soon as the private companies believe they can do it. I’ve seen something similar with our own condo association – we recently received bids for pick-up and the price plummeted. Then the “entrenched” company matched the price of the new one we that we choose.
A good point Helen. The waste and recycling industry certainly has its share of…how to put it…particularities. I’ve heard several other similar stories from various sources. Any type of innovation in this area will need to be well structured to avoid such issues.