Omaha Inks Long Term Contracts for Recyclables

The city of Omaha, Nebraska’s City Council approved two long-term contracts to handle the city’s curbside program.

At its Nov. 16^th meeting, the City Council approved a 10-year contract for Deffenbaugh Industries to provide weekly residential solid waste and recyclables collection to the city. The contract begins Jan. 2, 2006.

The Omaha City Council also approved a 10-year contract to First Star Fiber Inc., an Omaha-based recycling firm, to handle the recyclables processing delivered by Deffenbaugh. That contract also begins early in 2006.

The recyclables collected will be from a single-stream program. Materials to be handled and processed through the program include ONP, OCC, residential mixed paper, rigid containers, and steel and aluminum cans. However, the program will not include glass containers, a major problems with many single stream programs. While glass will not be collected with the single stream program, there will be several glass collection centers scattered around the city.

Lee Cornell, a spokesman for First Star Fiber, said that the time before the contract begins will give the company time to outfit its new building to allow it to handle the additional recyclable tonnage.

To handle the larger amount of material First Star is relocating its facility to a larger building. Cornell notes that the introduction of the city’s recyclables will increase the amount of material coming through the company by around 20,000 tons, with around 80 percent of that being fiber based material.

Weyerhaeuser Recycling, which held the contract with Omaha, had filed a notice in opposition to the awarding of the contract to First Star Fiber.

While First Star previously did not handle the processing of the material, Deffenbaugh has been the collector for the city.

While Deffenbaugh will continue to provide the collection service, due to complaints on previous service the city has imposed some policies. According to local press reports, Frank Brown, one of Omaha’s councilman has asked city attorneys to clarify penalties against Deffenbaugh if they do not perform according to the contract.

If there are more than 1,000 complaints filed with the city in a month the contract calls for Deffenbaugh to be fined about $22,000.