Automated garbage collection will start in Cedar Rapids this summer

What does a city do with 38,000 or so used, excess garbage cans?

That is a question that City Hall will have to help answer in 2011, says City Utilities Director Pat Ball, as the city purchases 38,000, new, 35-gallon plastic garbage containers - or one for each residential customer - at a total cost of $1.4 million.

Ball and City Manager Jeff Pomeranz told a receptive City Council Thursday night that the purchase of new, same-sized garbage containers is needed as the city begins to move this year to what they called “automated” garbage collection. The council seemed to like the idea.

Within four years, the city will have replaced all of its traditional, rear-load garbage trucks, which require two workers, with side-loaded trucks featuring an arm that hoists the garbage container into the truck. The new trucks will need just one employee, which means seven to nine current city solid-waste positions will be eliminated when the transition is complete.

Pomeranz, though, said no current employee would lose a city job as a result of the shift to one-worker trucks. He said some of the positions will be eliminated as they become vacant while some solid-waste workers will be offered open jobs elsewhere in city employment.

Ball said some neighborhoods of the city will see automated garbage pickup after the start of the new budget year on July 1 as the city plans to use two, side-loading, city recycling trucks as the city's first side-loading garbage trucks.

Ball said it would take the city five to six years to recoup the costs of new garbage trucks and new garbage containers from the savings the department realizes with fewer workers. The city now has 18 employees who pick up trash, he said.

With the change, the typical residential customer will have three different city-provided carts - a 95-gallon green Yardy cart, a 60-gallon blue recycling cart and the new 35-gallon garbage container. Ball said the latter might be gray in color, but he said he wasn't sure.

One advantage of the automated garbage-collection system, Ball said, is that residential customers will be able to pack up to 90 pounds of garbage into the new container.

“People can get pretty inventive in how to stuff things into them,” he said. He said the weight limit on cans of garbage is now 40 pounds as workers are required to pick up the cans and unload them manually.

Council member Kris Gulick said automation of garbage collection would help reduce worker compensation claims against the city.

Mayor Ron Corbett asked if the city would continue to need three different pickups at individual houses, one for garbage, one for yard waste and one for recycling. Pomeranz said the city would study that, but for now, Ball said the three different pickups made sense because garbage, yard waste and recycling items go to different spots for disposal.

As for what to do with existing garbage cans, Ball said they city likely will encourage residents to find new uses for them. He added that existing metal garbage cans will be easy to recycle.

In the new setup, residents will still be able to put out extra bags of garbage for an extra fee.