Through a strategic plan of sustainable partnerships, the fourth largest county in the fourth largest state changed the status quo of solid waste management and modernized waste and recyclables collection for the 21st century.
Hillsborough County is located along the West Coast Central, Tampa Bay Area of the State of Florida with a population of 1.3 million. The County includes three municipalities: the City of Tampa, Plant City and Temple Terrace. Hillsborough County has provided solid waste collection and disposal services for County residents and commercial businesses since 1955. During the early years, the County collected solid waste manually and disposed of this material at landfills. Today, the County operates an Integrated Solid Waste Management System that provides automated solid waste and recycling collection and disposal services that includes a waste to energy (WTE) facility that produces 46 megawatts (MW) of energy. These services are provided to approximately 800,000 residents and 16,000 commercial customers within a 950 square mile solid waste service area.
Disposal Facilities and Operations
Hillsborough County owns and/or operates several major solid waste facilities for the collection, recycling and disposal of solid waste, including: two transfer stations that receive residential and commercial waste six days a week, three yard and wood waste processing facilities that receive yard and wood waste from commercial and residential customers and the franchise collectors, three Household Hazardous Waste collection facilities open one Saturday a month on a rotating basis that receive household chemicals from residences, and a waste tire processing facility that processes used vehicle tires delivered for proper disposal.
The County staffs four Community Collection Centers (CCCs) six days a week for the delivery of large bulky items, household waste, electronics and paint not normally collected curbside. The CCCs are strategically located throughout the county to allow access to all residents.
Once the material is received at the transfer stations, the County uses a fleet of 36 tractor vehicles and trailers operated by County staff to transport processable solid waste to the County’s Waste-to-Energy/Resource Recovery Facility (WTE/RRF) and Class I Landfill. The landfill is the final depository for all ash residues, non-processables and bypass wastes from the County’s Solid Waste System. It also receives solid waste from the City of Temple Terrace as well as bypass wastes from the City of Tampa’s WTE/RRF Facility.
Transitioning to a Integrated Solid Waste Management System
The County had been operating under the same residential collection contracts for more than 17 years with the same three service providers: Progressive Waste Solutions, Republic Services and Waste Management..Residential solid waste and recyclables collection for approximately 260,000 residential units and commercial contracts affecting thousands of businesses were all set to expire on September 30, 2013. According to Solid Waste Management Division Director, Kimberly Byer, “The new partnerships developed out of a need to modernize the solid waste system of Hillsborough County that processed almost one million tons of waste per year with specific objectives to reduce cost, maintain high service levels, and protect the integrity of the solid waste system.”
Project Planning
Project planning began nearly two and one half years in advance of the expected franchise contract expiration date. A project team made up of County representatives from various departments including Solid Waste, Public Works, Utilities, Communication, and Administration and Kessler Consulting, Inc. (KCI) began the strategic planning process to determine the best course of action to modernize the County’s solid waste system while keeping three objectives in mind: rates, service and tonnage. Through a number of commission board meetings, planning sessions, and retreats, the project team developed an approach to procure residential collection services, recyclables processing services, and commercial collection services in the County’s unique, restricted-open market franchise system. Some examples the project’s objectives included:
- The development of five residential collection districts (about 50,000 households each) to create balance while realigning the County’s population centers that had grown and shifted since the last collection contract was implemented in 1996.
- The award of no more than two collection districts to any single hauler. This was done to enhance competition with at least three haulers being eligible for an award with a maximum of five haulers if each were awarded only one district. A 50,000 household district size also provided a large enough platform for even a smaller regional hauler to be able to participate in the procurement.
- A recyclables collection service that would include the use of roll carts and single stream processing to improve convenience and accessibility of residential recycling.
- A requirement at contract year seven for all front line collection trucks to be powered by alternative fuels such as CNG, was designed to not only help improve the Tampa Bay air quality, but to reduce dependency on foreign oil, while not making it a hardship to haulers to have new trucks at contract initiation. Most chose to start with CNG however.
- The requirement of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems on all containers and vehicles to verify residential and commercial service delivery.
- The issuance of a roll cart procurement for the manufacture, delivery, assembly, and distribution of over 520,000 carts resulting in two cart companies being awarded the work. As part of the $26 million roll cart procurement, an accuracy requirement for cart deliveries was incorporated into the specification and verified by the haulers’ RFID systems once collection began. The RFID systems were used to verify how close cart deliveries were to the actual requested address and a portion of the final cart delivery payment was based on the level of delivery accuracy.
“The new collection contracts were scheduled to last at least seven years, but included options for additional renewals, and the project team understood that the final design and technical specifications could be in place for 10 or more years,” says Byer. One of the guiding principles of the Hillsborough County project was to incorporate the latest advances in solid waste industry technologies, such as:
- CNG: Two out of the three haulers awarded the contract had elected to implement CNG at the start of the contract and the third hauler is currently phasing in CNG vehicles.
- Roll Carts and Automation: The benefits of fully automated roll cart collection are widely documented and include improvements in safety, production, litter control, and cost reduction to residents. It was important that roll cart technology be incorporated into a new program that could remain unchanged for the next 10 or more years.
- Single-Stream Recycling: As a result of switching to single-stream roll cart collection, tonnages recovered have doubled, increasing by 30,000 tons per year and the County is now receiving revenue for all its recyclables, which was not the case in the previous collection contracts.
- Radio Frequency Identification (RFID): RFID was necessary to manage the County’s roll cart assets. Nearly $26 million was spent to procure the production and delivery of the County’s new cart inventory, entrusted to each of the three haulers for inventory and maintenance, each with its own 10-year warranty. The RFID data is used to capture data in order to manage waste flow, provide service verification, target education and outreach programs and protect the assets in the system. Each roll cart delivered had an RFID tag installed that acts like an electronic serial number, and every commercial container in the County had RFID tags retrofitted.
Transition Challenges
Despite having only nine months to transition the largest single day automated roll cart start-up in history and fulfilling a truck order of 120 vehicles in that short amount of time, the planned deliveries were successful with the help of the franchise haulers and key decision makers in the County. The new contracts started on Tuesday, October 1, 2013. Byer explains that it is much easier and more conducive for smooth residential service transitions to begin on a Monday rather than any other day of the week. “Residents with twice weekly garbage service and three different types of collection (garbage, recyclables, and yard waste) would have found it challenging to put bags at the street for the old manual collection on Monday, September 30th and then begin using their carts for garbage and recycling service the rest of the week. Additionally, haulers would be forced to maintain two types of collection fleets (manual rear loaders and automated side or front loaders) during the first week. The project partners decided that it was worth the additional effort to modify the existing contracts as well as the new contracts with an effective start date of Monday September 30th and enlisted the County’s legal department to assist with the contract language and negotiations.” As a result, communication efforts to residents were easier and more streamlined, and all new services were initiated on a Monday.
Every cart program deals with the issue of change and the County was no different. “Residents simply do not like to do things differently, despite defining the benefits of the change. County-provided roll carts improve convenience, eliminate homeowner costs of garbage and recycling containers, allow for larger items, are easy to maneuver, keep out rodents and pest, etc. Despite these benefits, sometimes the size of a new cart can be overwhelming for some,” says Byer. In an effort to preempt what KCI referred to as Cart-Burn, the County decided to provide alternatively-sized carts for specific residents and to shorten the delivery period of carts so residents did not have to store carts prior to service starting for a long period of time. Townhomes and condominiums were designated as lower generators and received 65-gallon solid waste carts and 65-gallon recyclables carts as compared to the program-size carts (95-gallon solid waste carts and 65-gallon recyclables carts). In addition, seniors and disabled residents were given choices and allowed to request the size carts that they wanted to receive (95-gallon, 65-gallon, or 35-gallon for each). In preparation for delivery, each cart vendor was provided a massive database of addresses within defined districts with the designated type, number, and size of carts to be delivered and assigned to each residential address.
However, when residents began to receive their carts, a number of complaints regarding the size of the carts were received. The County set up a 12-person call center to answer questions about the new program. Despite not even using them for the first time, residents called to request smaller carts. Under the original plan, residents were asked to “test drive” their new carts for three months and beginning January 1, 2014, all residents who still wanted to resize a cart could do so free of charge. Three months would allow residents time to see the ebb and flow of garbage generation, including during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday when garbage volumes are at their highest and the need for the larger carts was imperative. However, once these calls started reaching elected officials, the County immediately implemented an “on-the-fly” cart swap program to help ease the pain.
Getting the data right up front was also essential. The project team needed reliable address lists with accurate house counts for hauler and cart procurement purposes, for proper route sizing, and for correct cart size selection to name just a few. Data sources included property appraiser records, tax rolls, GIS systems, and utility information, none of which matched and all needed to be reviewed. KCI was tasked by the County to perform the first ever physical property audit of every residential property in the County. In conjunction with the cart assembly and distribution (A&D) process, all new or abandoned/vacant residences were reported to the County and a physical audit of these addresses was conducted to verify and validate the database and correct customer information. This was essential for all collection processes. In total, field audits were conducted for 2,095 addresses, which were scheduled to receive 5,437 carts. The property assessment audit conducted congruently with the A&D process ensured that residents were correctly being assessed for solid waste services and identified more than $120,000 net of unrecognized annual property revenue in the system. The physical audit also helped to verify and validate vendor work and correct customer information. Byer points out that, “As a result of the A&D success, there has been a shift in the industry to improve A&D accuracy based on the model developed during this project. The industry is now seeing procurements for A&D services being modeled after Hillsborough’s cart bid.”
A significant challenge for the haulers was the design of their new, right-side, automated collection routes. Although the County’s same three haulers were awarded the new contracts, the entire County required rerouting as a result of new collection district boundaries and route sizes changed due to production improvements with automation. The larger vehicles did require more height clearance and haulers worked hard to identify roads with low trees that the County crews could work to trim in advance of contract start.
An extensive education and outreach program was necessary to communicate the changes residents could expect with the new program. “A program change of this size comes along once every generation and it was the project team’s mission to clearly communicate the message to each and every County resident and business,” stresses Byer. A comprehensive, multi-media effort consisting of town hall meetings, neighborhood street signage, Home Owner Association meetings, billboards, bus and public transportation wraps, radio, television, newspaper advertisements, press releases and news articles was kicked off and continued through program start-up. Residents became aware of their new carts, the automated trucks they would begin seeing, what to put in them and how to place their carts curbside. The County’s GIS department developed a Web site where residents could quickly find their new collection days and program theme messages were developed to make it easy for residents to “Fill it, Tilt it, That’s How We Roll!”
Meeting Objectives
The success of the Hillsborough County collection and processing procurements has created a long list of benefactors that include the nearly 1.3 million residents and tens of thousands of businesses in the County that participate in the new garbage and recyclables collection system, the solid waste companies and its employees that serve the County using these safer, automated tools, as well as the vendors that support these companies and the entire solid waste industry. Most importantly, the local environment benefits from the program. Clean burning CNG powered vehicles help to improve questionable air quality in the Tampa Bay area while reducing local dependency on foreign oil and a doubling of recovered recyclables improves Green House Gas (GHG) emissions and energy factors by over 72,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in (EPA WARM Model). Within its first year, the Hillsborough County Collection Program met its objectives. Some of the measurable results were:
- $85 Million economic impact on U.S. solid waste industry in 2013
- Over 120 new collection vehicles procured—nearly 75 are CNG powered
- More than 520,000 roll carts assembled & distributed in 51 days
- Largest same-day automated start-up in North America
- 1,750,000 residential & commercial RFID data points collected monthly
- 100 percent increase in recyclables recovery—30,000 additional tons per year
- More than $10 Million annual savings from previous contract
Contract haulers, Progressive Waste Solutions, Republic Services and Waste Management currently collect residential solid waste twice a week, recyclables once a week and yard waste once a week in designated districts. As part of the residential the collection contract, the haulers were granted exclusive franchises to collect processable waste throughout the county service area. The three haulers must bid against each other to provide commercial collection services in Hillsborough County.
Curbside collection services are mandatory for single-family residential property owners and the payment for solid waste collection and disposal services are included as non ad-valorem assessments that appear on annual property tax billing. Collection services require the mandatory separation of yard waste from processable solid waste for residential and commercial customers.
Single-Stream Recycling
The County provides single-stream automated curbside residential recycling collection service. Residential customers are required to use a County issued roll cart for this service. Customers are urged to bundle up loose plastic bags, plastic packaging and plastic film into a single bag, and tie securely, before placing in the cart. They can toss all other recyclables into the cart, without bagging. Acceptable items include:
- Containers
- Glass bottles and jars
- Aluminum cans and foil
- Steel and tin cans
- Aseptic containers and gable top cartons (milk jugs, juice boxes)
- Paper
- Paperboard (cereal boxes, food and beverage boxes)
- Mail, magazines, newspapers and advertisements
- Writing papers, pads and notes
- Corrugated cardboard boxes (flattened)
- Paper bags
- Any other paper that is clean, unsoiled and tears
- Plastics
- All plastics labeled No. 1 through 7 on the bottom of the item (including foamed Polystyrene/Styrofoam)
- Grocery and shopping bags
- Plastic packaging
- Plastic film (cereal box liners, clean plastic storage bags)
These items cannot be processed:
- Soggy or soiled paper that has been used for cleaning people or pets
- Light bulbs
- Glass windows, mirrors, dishes and cups
Waste-To-Energy
The cornerstone of the County’s solid waste management system is its Waste-to-Energy/Resource Recovery Facility that was built in 1987 with a capacity to incinerate 1,200 tons of solid waste, per day and produce 29 MW of energy. Prior to WTE, the County disposed of waste through a network of landfills of varies sizes located throughout the county. One of the County’s most notorious landfill sites is the Taylor Road Landfill located in east central Hillsborough County. The landfill operated from 1976 to 1980. The landfill was intended for the disposal of municipal waste, however disposal of unknown quantities of industrial waste were suspected to be disposed of in the landfill. During a nationwide groundwater sampling program in the late 1970s in vicinity, the Taylor Road groundwater was shown to be affected by volatile organics and metals. In 1980, the EPA filed suit against Hillsborough County under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA); the Taylor Road Landfill was later added to the Super Fund List in October 1981. In response, residents in the area were added to the County’s water distribution system and extensive monitoring of the groundwater was implemented. Following this incident, the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioner’s professed the County will not rely on landfilling as a sole means of waste disposal. In response, on January 8, 1985 the County broke ground on its Solid Waste Energy Recovery Project later named the Hillsborough County Resource Recovery Facility, a 46 MW Waste-to-Energy Facility.
In 2009, the County’s WTE/RRF capacity was expanded to now be able to incinerate 1,800 tons of processable solid waste, per day and produce 46 MW of energy. This is enough energy to power between 26,000 to 30,000 homes annually. As a result of the expanded capacity of the WTE/RRF and the County’s new single-stream automated recycling collection service, significant solid waste tonnage has now been diverted from the County’s landfill which has increased the County’s landfill capacity. The County currently has more than 30 years of permitted and constructed disposal capacity.
Additional Challenges
One of the County’s major challenges happened in 2010 when a sinkhole developed within the footprint of County’s Class I Landfill. The collapse measured approximately 150 to 200 feet wide at the surface and was estimated to be about 190 feet deep. “The sinkhole event presented many unique challenges and actions taken by the County and it’s contracted engineers to remediate the sinkhole area, address the impact to the clay liner and repair the landfill infrastructure within the proximity of the sinkhole. The 5.5 million dollar remediation consisted of a five-stage approach and addressed stabilization, relocation, investigation/characterization, sinkhole remediation and repair (isolation) of the impacted clay liner,” says Byer. Additional groundwater monitoring wells were installed down gradient of the sinkhole and implemented additional monitoring of groundwater wells adjacent to the sinkhole area for the duration of the remediation. The approach implemented for stabilizing and remediating the sinkhole has minimized the potential for future impacts to the environment.
The County’s transition to single-stream recycling with new roll carts has been successful at significantly increased recycling participation and tonnage. The County currently collects 60,000 tons annually. However, this new service has also posed a challenge—contamination. Contamination occurs when residents place non-program materials, (e.g. yard waste, garden hoses, clothing, etc.) or recyclable materials that are heavily soiled with food waste or excessive liquids into their recycling carts. Contamination negatively impacts the entire recycling system and contributes to lost productivity at the material recovery facilities. Contamination also increases the maintenance of sorting equipment, diminishes the quality and marketability of processed recyclables, and sometimes decreasing the tonnage of recyclables. In addition, contaminated recycling can potentially cause an entire truckload of quality recyclables to be unacceptable.
Byers explains that this problem is compounded by the marketing and promotion of the convenience of single-stream recycling and the availability and use of new roll carts that were part of the County’s transition from manual to automated collection service. “Unfortunately, this messaging can negatively affect the recycling program as residents begin to assume that they can recycle almost any plastic or metal object they come across causing significant processing challenges at material recovery facilities.”
As a result of this challenge, the County is developing a comprehensive public education, social media, marketing and awareness campaign designed to change the behavior and attitudes of customers about how to properly recycle. With increasing recycling interest from the public, a sustained public education campaign and emerging technologies within material recovery facilities, the future of the County’s recycling program will continue to be a great success. The education campaign is scheduled to kick off in January 2016. Although it is a countywide campaign, Hillsborough County will use the carts’ RFID system to target areas of high contamination to better use public education dollars. A recycling composition will be conducted in November 2015 to establish a baseline contamination rate. A second study will be conducted 12 months later to gauge the effectiveness of the outreach program,
Looking Forward
Byer is especially proud of the fact that not only has the Country created a totally Integrated Solid Waste Management System, but it owns all of its solid waste facilities, manages contracts for solid waste collection services and solid waste facility management and operations, as well as diverts a significant amount of tonnage from the landfill by expanding the capacity of the WTE/RRF to incinerate more tonnage, per day. In turn, that provides electricity for the WTE/RRF and nearby County operations from the energy generated at the WTE/RRF.
Future plans for the Division include developing a Solid Waste Master Plan that guides waste resource management for the next 20 years. This will include evaluating future investments required at the County’s ageing Resource Recovery Facility, exploring incinerator ash reuse, evaluating the feasibility of expanding the County’s self-service energy capabilities, developing partnerships with other WTE owners and reevaluating residential collection frequencies.
Challenges to this plan will be balancing the cost of service to our customers with the need to invest in projects that support sustainable waste management.
Says Byer, “Hillsborough County Solid Waste’s accomplishments are attributable to the forward-thinking of the Board of County Commissioners and the committed solid waste team that work in collaboration with our private partners to overcome challenges to achieve a common goal of increasing the prosperity of the citizens of Hillsborough County.”
For more information, contact James Ransom at (813) 209-3025 or visit www.hillsboroughcounty.org/solidwaste.
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Additional Key Information
- The County has 109 Solid Waste Management Division employees
- The County mandates training for safety and heavy equipment and vehicle operations and encourages staff to attend and obtain certifications from solid waste industry related courses.
- The County provides the community with public education and awareness information through a variety of outlets that include: television, radio, billboard, newspapers, neighborhood organization newsletters, website, fliers, brochures, pamphlets, etc. to promote its programs and services or to inform the public about any changes to solid waste services.
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Sustainability Partners
- Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners
- Hillsborough County Public Works Department
- Hillsborough County Public Utilities Department
- Hillsborough County Solid Waste Division
- Hillsborough County Public Information Services Division
- Kessler Consulting, Inc.
- Progressive Waste Solutions
- Republic Services
- Waste Management, Inc.
- Environmental Solutions Group
- McNeilus Companies
- Sonrai Systems
- Schaefer Systems
- Cascade Engineering
- WasteRec Services
- Trio Environmental Services
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Awards
- In 2014 the Automated Curbside Collection Program received the Florida West Coast Branch of APWA’s Project of the Year.
- In 2014 the Automated Curbside Collection Program received the Florida APWA’s Technical and Management Innovation Award.
- In 2015 NWRA Sustainability Partnership Game Changer Award
- The Northwest Transfer Station Expansion received the 2015 SWANA Silver Transfer Station Award. The project consisted of the construction of the Northwest Transfer Station Expansion, Phase 1 in FY15. The $11.7 million project took approximately two years to complete and was all done while keeping the facility fully operational.