As city officials prepare to take garbage collectors to court with a new call for proposals, the St. Paul City Council has released a wish list detailing their priorities for a future citywide contract. These broad priorities would allow some level of car-sharing in multi-family homes, as well as opt-outs among single-family homeowners who can demonstrate that they produce limited amounts of waste. This would require city approval on a case-by-case basis, as well as oversight. “We continue to tailor this to the needs of our community members,” Council President Amy Brendmoen said.
The current five-year contract with a consortium of private freight forwarders expires on September 30th. Currently, five carriers — Waste Management, Aspen Waste Systems, Gene’s Disposal, Highland Sanitation, and Republic Services — serve the city’s one- to four-residential units, each assigned to its own zones or neighborhoods, rather than competing for individual contracts like cellphone companies do.
The organized garbage collection started in September 2018 in St. Paul. Critics immediately seized on concerns ranging from billing to furloughs. Rather than slowing industry consolidation as once hoped, the deal appears to have accelerated it, giving larger companies like Waste Management an added incentive to gain market share by buying routes from smaller ones. When the existing contract was signed in November 2017, the consortium consisted of 15 carriers. Some of those concerns have diminished over time, but the stubborn question of who gets to share carts or withdraw from the program altogether remains a thorny one. There is also some debate about how much residents pay for a service that relatively few use – the collection of “bulk items” like sofas and fridges.