City Sets Goal of Zero Waste in the Trash Hauling Business

The Long Beach City Council voted unanimously to approve a study to examine the private commercial waste hauling system in the city, to improve it.

Vice Mayor Rex Richardson, who led the discussion during the May 23 meeting, said concerns from the public led him to take the controversial topic to the city council.

Not to be confused with the public sector side of trash hauling, which many residents in homes and smaller apartment buildings are familiar with. This is the type of trash-collecting provided by the city, where residents roll trash containers to the curb or back alley and city trucks empty the barrels each week. This type of trash pick-up will not be addressed in the study.

The study will focus on the commercial sector of the trash hauling business, not the public sector, Richardson and City Attorney Charles Parkin clarified during the meeting.

“We’re exploring uniquely one side of this business, just the commercial waste portion,” Richardson said.

The commercial sector serves apartment and condo buildings with 10 or more units as well as business buildings and mobile home parks. The city will not collect garbage from these larger types of places. These properties must use commercial trash hauling companies for refuse collection.

But there are issues with commercial trash hauling.

One problem is that commercial companies “have no rhyme or reason” to their routes. Trucks from different companies can overlap routes and go through the same area multiple times a week.

Heavy trucks can rumble through the streets and alleys regularly and disturb citizens, wear down pavement and pollute the environment.

And commercial companies typically provide dumpsters to the customers with no recycling options. Not only do banana peels, coffee grounds and meat packages go into the dumpsters, but soda cans, glass jars, plastic bottles and paper products also go into the same containers.

The city aims to increase recycling with a goal of zero waste.

There are 15 private trash haulers in the city, the city’s cap per the municipal code.

“There are 15 slots owned by different businesses, some of those have consolidated into larger ones, so in fact, 75 percent of the hauling slots that we have are owned by three haulers,” Richardson said. “So three companies make up 75 percent of the business, which creates very little opportunity for small guys to get in, which is why we can actually write into the RFP (request for proposals) opportunities for small guys to have a better shot at doing business in our city.”

It wouldn’t matter if they are union or non-union, Richardson explained.

Public Works Director Craig Beck said a study would “probably be in the one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half year range to finalize, bring back to council and implement.”

Then the city will put forth a five-year notice for the trash haulers, he added.

Mayor Robert Garcia said, “I think that we have to be honest, all of us, including those that are apartment owners and those of us that are trying to make sure we have competition, that the current system we have is not efficient. When you have multiple carriers on streets and alleys consistently all day there is wear and tear. That’s just a reality. So if we can come up with a better system by working together, I think that’s a really good thing.”

Garcia said other cities that have addressed the topic will be looked at to see what worked and did not work. Long Beach can improve upon what other cities did, increase recycling, address routes and ensure that there is competition and that the workers are taken care of, he added.

The study will look at all kinds of concerns from the public, council and trash haulers.

Property owner and realtor Robert Fox said:

“Here’s my concern … if we give a five year notice, which is basically a termination notice to contract as it is … there will be companies who have consolidated already and decided maybe this game is already tilted to the wrong direction or to somebody else’s direction and they will exit the market. So at the end of our five-year term, we will only have one hauler left to deal with. Our concern is to keep a market competition in the city of Long Beach to avoid any kind of percentage increase …”

He added, “We’ve seen a 200 percent increase in trash hauling in Los Angeles and they’re not even implementing the program yet. It will be two months to six months before they’re done.”

Robert Nothoff, director of the Don’t Waste Long Beach coalition, was pleased with the city council’s decision to finally address private trash hauling, which has a recycle rate of only 20 percent.

“We’re really excited that the city is moving forward with this,” he said. “It’s a great opportunity at hand. And we have a great opportunity to boost recycling rates, reduce air and noise pollution, reduce street traffic, preserve our roads and alleyways and prioritize food recovery for people over landfills.”

kirt@beachcomber.news