From collaborating with other communities on how to improve waste collections to improving operations through vigorous safety programs, customer service and standardizing their fleet, Gilbert, AZ’s Environmental Services Division continuously looks for ways to grow and strive.
Nestled in central Arizona, the Town of Gilbert has seen incredible growth over the last 40 years, from approximately 1,900 people in 1970 to about 220,000 today. As a result, the town has always been involved in solid waste collection services. Their Environmental Services Division collects residential waste and recycling, household hazardous waste, white goods, bulky items and provides front load and roll-off services for commercial and industrial customers. The Division began collecting single-stream recycling in 1992 with fully automated collection vehicles and now employs a staff of 85, while operating 31 automated side loaders, 14 rear end loaders, seven wheel loaders, five front end loaders and three roll-off trucks. Gilbert’s planning area encompasses 72 square miles and services 69,000 residential homes and 1,100 commercial/industrial customers.
Refining the Business
“Over the last five years we have been on an economic roller coaster,” says Louis Andersen, Environmental Services Manager. “We went from averaging 400 to 550 new homes per month in 2006 to fewer than 100 during 2007 and 2008. Keeping up with that rapid growth would not have been possible without committed and engaged employees; the staff here really made that happen. Each team member played a key role from the drivers picking up larger routes to supervisors working late and our continuous rerouting. We were always a little behind with staffing and equipment. Currently, we are back to delivering about 200 homes each month.”
Safety
Andersen stresses that the economic downturn provided the Division time to refine their businessby refocusing their attention on safety. “We decided that safety is most important to us all and that our employees should go home safe every day.We established a safety strike team, updated our safety manual and operating procedures, and trained all staff on the Franklin Covey Method.”This method trains managers on the four disciplines of execution (4DX) and the importance of focusing on a particular area of each day. With 4DX, you identify and execute each item or priority and come up with lead measures, so that each employee can follow them.
After Andersen was trained in the 4DX method, he trained the Division’s 85 employees and supervisors, which helped to gain their buy-in on making safety the most important goal. In addition, the NSWMA Safety Director, David Biderman, was enlisted to come out and provide additional safety training for supervisors. He also invited other Valley cities to join in, including managers and supervisors from Tempe, Mesa, Prescott and Scottsdale. The method was kicked off to all employees on July 1, 2012.
“Currently, we meet each week to see how we are doing on that particular item,” says Andersen. “So far, we have seen phenomenal results. We have only had one safety injury and one singular accident since we began the 4DX method.” Andersen goes on to explain that since implementation, his management staff has noticed that the entire employee team is more engaged in the safety aspect. “Observing management stress the importance of safety has really encouraged all employees to get on board with the program,” explains Andersen. “Each month, on a rotating basis, drivers share a safety topic, such as being in full safety gear at the beginning of your shift, with fellow employees.”
Customer Service
In addition to safety, focus on customer service has also remained at the top of the priority list. “We developed a vision in 2007 to be the best municipal solid waste operation in the country,” says Andersen. “We continue to work hard, learn and watch for new opportunities.”
James Poston, Field Supervisor for the Division’s residential routes, suggested they look to the drivers for input on how to improve customer service. “The drivers interact daily with our customers and have a valuable perspective,” says Poston. Once that was done, Poston found that the drivers wanted to be able to give the kids something when on their routes in order to encourage truck safety. The idea has been implemented and each driver now carries small spongy garbage trucks and recycling container toys with them. “The drivers came up with the idea and we have continued doing it,” says Poston. “It has been a great success thus far.”
Additional customer service improvements include online service requests, versus having to go exclusively through a call center. Co-mingled recycling service has been added for all existing commercial customers and multifamily housing residents at no charge. Gilbert also offers residents a free one-time delivery per month of MSW to the landfill or transfer station.
Household Hazardous Waste
In July 2007, the Gilbert opened their Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) facility, which has proved to be a very popular program. Jack Minkalis, who currently manages the facility, says the facility has serviced more than 23,000 customers and collected more than 1.7 million pounds of hazardous waste since its opening. The 4,000 square foot facility was part of a Capital Improvement Project that included the South Area Service Center in the southeastern part of the community. Prior to theHHW facility, the Division held two to three events annually, but they were only capturing a small amount of the HHW generated by citizens. The cost of hosting these events were also a concern as the Division had to pay staff to work an eight-hour event three times per year.
“We benchmarked our operations against cities like Flagstaff and Tempe who already had HHW collection facilities and decided to build our facilities based on the lessons they learned,” says Minkalis. “We now collect paint, tires, batteries, cleaning agents, motor oil, gasoline, flammables, pesticides, herbicides and any chemicals that don’t belong in the waste stream.” The HHW facility is open to the public three times per week—Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
At the HHW facility, the Division continuously looks for opportunities to recycle and has just implemented a new policy for paint collected from residents. Working with the non-profit organizations, Gilbert Cares and Habitat for Humanity, HHW makes available to them free of charge the paint collected. The facility also recycles all of the good paint that comes into the facility by mixing the colors to create a popular light tan color that is available to residents for the asking. HHW has drop off points for electronic waste, batteries, light bulbs, cardboard, and carpet and foam pad recycling. Gilbert offers free appliance pick up as well.
In November 2012, Minkalis worked with neighboring Town of Queen Creek (pop. 7,200) to develop an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) which allowed for Queen Creek residents to deliver HHW to Gilbert’s collection facility for a fee. The IGA was approved by both Queen Creek and Gilbert Town Councils and Queen Creek residents are already enjoying use of the facility. “Through all of these programs, the HHW currently diverts 89 percent of the waste dropped off at the HHW from landfills through recycling and reuse,” says Minkalis.
Local Collaboration
Andersen remembers back in the 1990s, when he was attending the annual SWANA Senior Executive Conference, discussing more regional ways for municipal solid waste operations to collaborate. Since then, he has been busy encouraging three other local cities to join together on a regional solid waste disposal proposal.
About four years ago Andersen started asking other Phoenix Valley solid waste directors to start meeting with him on a quarterly basis and he was able to get buy-in from Scottsdale, Mesa and a few other cities. “We call it the Solid Waste Director Regional Meeting because we can talk about things that affect each of us on a daily basis. In that discussion, I had brought up the regional disposal concept, saying let’s join together and see what everyone is doing. Will Black (from Mesa) and I really champion this; we have gotten a great response from the city councils of Tempe, Scottsdale, Mesa and Gilbert.”
“This is nothing new. Public safety has been doing this type of regional collaboration for years, Andersen explains. “The thought process was if we were to join forces we could likely see better pricing, but mostly save in the redundancies, because we are all doing similar bids at different times of the year.”
Now, all four regions have signed an inter-governmental agreement to solicit for disposal options together, which will save time and money by looking regionally rather than just locally. Andersen stresses that it is important for all municipalities to look for regional opportunities when they are available because each municipality deals with similar challenges.
Staying in Front
One of the strategies that the Division deployed several years ago was getting away from having multiple trucks with different chassis and bodies and moving to standardizing the fleet in order to save on costs. The ultimate goal of doing so was to have one style of automated side loader, front-end loader and rear loader. This means, that if a truck is down for that day, not only can any driver use any truck, but they will also be familiar with the cab and configuration.
Andersen points out that this move also helps with safety concerns, maintenance and inventory costs. “When you are not stocking parts for five or six different types of vehicles, it allows for our mechanics to have better maintenance times since they do not have to learn the multiple systems. In turn, we have less downtime and our annual savings in maintenance is about 15 percent—all of this is from standardizing our vehicles.”
So far, it has taken about 10 years for the Division to standardize the fleet. Within seven years, the automated side loaders were replaced, while the front loaders and rear loaders were replaced within 10 years. Truck replacement was staggered based on fleet size, age and population. “Standardization of the fleet has paid huge dividends for safety, driver familiarity, as well as fleet maintenance and inventory costs,” says Andersen.
Since driver appreciation is a priority, the Division tracks accidents or incidents and holds a company BBQ mid-year to appreciate a job well done. At the end of the year, the drivers who have not had an accident in the last 12 months receive an award, such as jackets, gift cards, multi-tools, pins, etc. The Division has also created a plaque that shows drivers who have had no accidents for each year.
Poston adds, “We’ve upgraded our safety record and about 98 percent of our drivers now go annually without an accident. We have one driver that has gone 17 years without a single incident. The little things we do to show our appreciation helps to keep the morale up. We have encouraged safe driving by taking advantage of NSWMA’s classes on coaching refuse truck drivers as well as displaying the Slow Down to Get Around stickers on our vehicles.”
David Biderman has also come in to hold a seminar for several cities and supervisors to talk about safety and ways to send that message to staff. Since the implementation of this program, over the 10 years Andersen has been with Gilbert, the claims went from more than 10 per 100,000 miles driven to under three—a great accomplishment for the Division.
Outreach Programs
Gilbert’s Environmental Services Division has also been involved in a numberof outreach programs, focusing particularly on community education. The Division participates in new resident socials where they talk about the services that are available to them as well as taking part in any number of community events, such as 5K/12K runs, fall festivals, etc.
“We like to have a presence at as many events as possible,” says Joslyn Marty, Recycling Administrator. “During community 5K/12K runs, we are onsite to encourage people to recycle their plastic bottles, cans, etc. as they are going by. Quarterly, we host town-wide collection events of electronic waste, textiles, cardboard and shredded paper. During our recent 2012 holiday community collection event, we diverted 54 tons of holiday trees, 2 tons of cardboard and 2000 pounds of electronic waste from our waste stream. Gilbert residents are very involved and have a sincere desire to be part of the solution,” says Marty.
“We work closely with local schools to provide recycling and compost containers. Our ideas go beyond traditional outreach borders. We just partnered with the Girl Scouts, giving them the opportunity take a class and complete a recycling project at our South Area facility to earn one of their merit badges. The educational displays we produce are creative and engaging and encourage our residents to think about the impact of small choices they make each day regarding reduce, reuse and recycle behaviors. In November 2012, I spearheaded the creation of the East Valley Recycling Alliance (EVRA). This informal group of Recycling Administrators from seven neighboring cities/towns convenes monthly with a specific agenda to discuss challenges we face and come up with solutions. We share information on best practices, swap recommendations on vendors, give input on each other’s educational material and pool outreach resources if we can. We feel we have a common goal to increase the diversion rate in our state of Arizona and we champion each other in our local efforts to do that. So far, our meetings have been very productive!” says Marty.
This year, the Division will also create 14 banner ads to display on seven of their trucks. These ads will highlight community involvement, the HHW facility, particular super recyclers, as well as staff that do an outstanding job with recycling. Marty points out that they have a brand new Communications Division that will help them embark on the use of social media. “We already submit monthly articles to our town blog that shine the spotlight on local Gilbert reduce, reuse and recycle heroes. We are also in the process of creating a Pinterest page to highlight all of the projects that the Division does with regards to reduce, reuse and recycle.”
“Digital communications has been one of the primary focuses of our new Town Manager and this is where we are going in the future,” says Marty. “Our Facebook page and Twitter account routinely receive questions about recycling. This shows us that there really is this need for education, not only for children but adults as well.”
Challenges and Achievements
Andersen says that a few of the challenges that the Environmental Services Division has dealt with over the last several yearsare rapid growth, continuous routing updates and staffing. However, Andersen is quick to point out that the Division is an extremely well run operation that has been able to sustain the town’s rapid growth from 2003 to 2006 while maintaining financial stability. In 2012 they were able to reduce the monthly fee by 7.5 percent for customers. “We are running a business and by watching our bottom line, being efficient, increasing the number of cans per driver that are collected, we’ve been able to reduce our operating costs, standardize our fleet and reduce our landfill costs with the help from our private contractors, Republic Services and Waste Management,” states Andersen. “Our revenue exceeds our operating costs which is how we are left with a fund balance.”
The Division also has a vehicle replacement reserveaccount which allows for funds to be set aside for the purchase of new vehicles when older ones are at the end of their lives. Andersen says that there is also another operating budget that covers the maintenance and parts of the existing vehicles.
What does the future hold for the industry? Andersen believes that deciphering the emerging technologies on waste to energy or alternative waste disposal is going to be the next big step.
“There are a lot of discussions about zero waste and product stewardship as well as alternative fuels, which is another aspect we are looking at, especially since the large national companies are moving in this direction. We’ve already purchased our first CNG car and we are evaluating the possibility of changing our collection trucks as well.”
In addition, Andersen says that they are looking at how other processes are going to work financially and economically while continuing to move in the direction of zero waste and reducing their carbon footprint.
Focusing on the Future
Right now, Andersen says that the Division is focusing on increasing commercial and industrial recycle diversion. “Our current strategy of not charging for recycle collection is working. The free pickup gives local companies the incentive to reduce their waste generation and we are selling the material we collect to offset the collection costs. We are also continuously working on maintaining our high level of customer service and improving our safety record as our community rapidly grows year after year.”
For more information, contact Louis Andersen at (480) 503-6426 or e-mail [email protected].
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Awards and Accolades
State SWANA Rodeo Champions 2007, 2008, 2012
SWANA AZ State Solid Waste Operation of the Year 2008
Several National Driver of the Year Awards since 2005
EIA Driver of the Year Municipal 2007
EIA Driver of the Year finalists 2006, 2008, 2009
State SWANA Driver of the Year 2008
Several National SWANA Rodeo first and second place finishes
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The Numbers
- April 2003 customers serviced 42,350
- April 2004 44,850
- April 2005 49,450
- April 2006 56,450
- April 2007 57,630
- April 2008 60,890
- April 2009 62,735
- April 2010 64,650
- April 2011 65,700
- April 2012 67,215
- December 2012 68,750