DAVID BILLIPS
WESTFIELD – The single-stream recycling program will launch in January as planned but will involve growing pains because of the lack of a functional truck fleet. The single-stream recycling will require trucks equipped with lift arms and currently the lift arms for the blue and green recycling bins are attached to employees.
And then there is the maintenance issue related to the present aging fleet.
“The present fleet is falling apart,” Interim Department of Public Works Superintendent David Billips said, “so we’re looking to rent trucks. I had the bid specifications, but did not have the money to act on that.”
“I’ve identified some money, money we can take from open salary accounts which will be more than enough for truck rental,” Billips said.
JOSEPH A. ROUSE
The salary accounts are related to a retirement and two employees who were injured on the job and are currently collecting workmen’s compensation funding, not their salary.
Billips said that he anticipates that the city will need to rent vehicles for a year, or more, because of the time needed to fabricate the special use trucks. That time will be useful because it will allow the city to assess the single-stream recycling program before making any truck purchase.
“I’m trying to develop a capital plan for the fleet and part of that planning process is to determine how many trucks we’ll need for single-stream recycling,” Billips said. “History, in other communities, shows single-stream recycling programs drop solid waste collection by 30 per cent, but I don’t know for sure if that also applies to Westfield.”
More than 13,000 of the new burgundy 65-gallon trash barrels have been distributed to city residents and even though there is a big red “STOP” sign in the material delivered with the new barrels advising residents not to begin using the new barrels until January, some residents immediately started using the new barrels.
Health Director Joseph Rouse said another issue is that residents used the proper burgundy 65-gallon barrel for trash, and the grey 96-gallon barrel for recycling.
“The drivers are trained to look at the size and color of the container; they don’t get out of the trucks to check (the contents), so if people are using the 96-gallon container for trash, it will be collected by the recycling truck operator and that will contaminate the (entire recycling) load,” Rouse said. “That could cost several thousand dollars to correct. Recycling loads contaminated with household trash will be turned away from the MRF (the Municipal Recycling Facility in Springfield, which serves 78 communities in the western part of the state).”
“The 65-gallon containers will be burgundy in color,” Rouse said. “There will be an information packet delivered with the new containers. That packet will have information explaining the whole program and also a sticker to put on the lid of the grey 96 gallon containers which will be used for the single-stream recycling collection.”
Residents need to put that sticker on the lid of the 96-gallon container, not on the lid of the new 65-gallon containers Rouse said. If residents do not put the sticker on the 96-gallon container to indicate that it’s recycling, it will not be collected.
Billips told the Board of Public Works that in six months the conversion to single-stream recycling will be working and that the startup pains anticipated with the January 5 launch will become just be a bad memory.
