Officials see red over green waste misuse
People putting wrong items in compost bins
Two months into this year's green-waste collection season, public-works officials are noticing a troubling trend: More people are putting nongreen waste into their green-waste bins.
The green waste is picked up, along with landfill waste and recyclable waste, on weekly trash collection days. It is trucked to the Trans Jordan Landfill's composting facility, where "spotters" look through each load, making sure it only has acceptable waste: leaves, grass clippings, pruned branches and pulled weeds.
If they find something noncompostable, including regular household garbage, construction waste or food items, they pick it out. If there's too much to pick out, the load has to be shipped to the landfill proper, where it all gets dumped with the other garbage.
The city is not charged by the landfill for composting loads. But it is charged for each load that goes to the landfill trash heap. So when a load is contaminated, the city has to pay, and the compostable greenery goes to waste.
"It was working quite well last year," assistant city manager Tom Steele said. "We don't know exactly what happened. We hope people will get smart about it and get it back to being a decent program."
He said part of the problem could just be well-intentioned residents who aren't clear on the details. "Some of it is people just don't know and they bag their grass clippings, for example."
Residents pay $10.88 monthly for their trash-collection program. That pays for pickup of trash, recyclables and green waste, and it also pays for the three cans and the city's neighborhood Dumpster program. The city pays $1.35 per month per household for the green waste program.
Steele said the city is trying to tackle the problem and get the program back on track. The "spotters" will now be hitting neighborhoods on trash collection days, before the trucks arrive for pickup, and peeking inside the green-waste cans. If contamination is found, they will put a big yellow sticker on the can.
Those stickers, Steele said, serve two purposes: They tell the trucks not to pick up that can, and they alert the residents to the fact that they are doing something wrong.
Homes that continue to misuse the cans after a couple of warnings will have their green-waste cans taken away.
Steele hopes this will do the trick, but if the problem isn't reduced, the City Council may have to do away with the program.
The program is rare among Utah cities. Most cities have no form of green-waste collection, and those that do generally just do once-a-year spring cleaning pickup. West Jordan's green-waste collection season runs April through November.
E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com
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