A recent Dallas City Council discussion focused on making significant changes to the city's struggling curbside recycling program. While the city has been one of the laggards in participation rate and collection levels, a meeting held on May 22nd sketched out how extending the city's recycling program to twice a month covering the whole city would allow the city to become a leader in municipal recycling programs. Additionally, the city also is considering adding 96-gallon receptacles for consumers.
Dallas has around 250,000 households in the city. While the city does offer curbside collection services to its residents, the changes being discussed, it is hoped, will sharply increase the volume of recyclable material being collected.
The service would be twice month, would be a single-stream program and would include both roll carts and tagged bags.
To accomplish the revamped program the city is seeking a 7-year contract with a 3-year extension. Specifications are in the process of being developed, and the city will be getting ready to release bid opportunities for collection, processing and supplying roll carts to residents.
In presenting its case, the city calculates that the new program, along with a significant boost in the promotional campaign for the city, will double the average participation rate from 25 percent to 50 percent in five years. At the same time, the city also anticipates that the quantity of material will increase from 8,250 tons a year to 43,600 tons per year. Further, the city estimates that the recycling program would generate more than $1 million in annual city revenue projections.
Mary Nix, director of sanitation services for the city of Dallas, says that with the potential change to a cart (along with the availability of the blue bags as well), the city hopes to see the collection level increase from the 3-4 percent level presently attained, to a figure closer to 25 percent.
The city presently has three bids out addressing the changing program. The bids include one for handling the twice a week municipal solid waste collection, a bid to handle the curbside recycling program, which with collection twice a month; and a bidder for containers to be used by residents.
According to Nix, the bids are due on June 16. If the Dallas City Council approves the changes to the recycling program the new recycling program could begin as soon as this fall.