Several west-metro suburbs launched organics recycling programs at the start of the new year under a new Hennepin County mandate requiring all cities to offer the service to their residents. The county left it up to each city to decide how to roll out the service — whether using curbside collection or a drop-off site — and how to charge for it. In some places, it’s voluntary for those who want to pay an additional fee.
In other places such as Golden Valley, residents will be charged for the service whether they choose to recycle organics or not — and that bothers some people, even if they favor recycling. “Who likes being told they have to do something?” said Carrie Schmitz, a backyard composting teacher and advocate. “Make people want to do it.”
Most of the county’s large cities have complied with the policy, approved four years ago and made effective Jan. 1, with a citywide service contract under which everyone pays around $5 a month. But neighboring cities have taken different approaches. Some require all residents to pay a flat fee, others let them voluntarily sign up. Not every city met the Jan. 1 deadline, and those that did saw some hiccups with collections. “We gave cities flexibility in how they implement the requirement. So that flexibility did lead to a wide variety,” said Ben Knudson, a supervisor with the county’s Environment and Energy Department. “It’s a little more of the wild west in the west metro because it’s a straight line of those cities from Maple Grove all the way down to Eden Prairie where they decided that they didn’t want to do a citywide contract.”