hello everyone thank you for tuning in to belmont thirty i'm joanna jewell is senior multimedia journalist for bell the belmont citizen herald and with the local belmont dot com today i'm pleased to have with me as my guests the director of belmont's public works department j market and the recycling coordinator mary beth counted welcome mary beth and jay thank you jay you've been with the department for about two and a half years now you came from the city of you had the same role in the city of everett i was a director sort of service director of city services similar role personal oral and marybeth you came to us from the city of melrose us in the same role yes and you've been with us for four and a half years what we're going to talk about today is waste management because in the very near future which i believe is when january or december the selectmen will be voting on a new waste management contract for the you know when the going to be actually voting in october we're going to be going to bed ok and based on the bid results they'll be making as such and to have a contract with a vendor around december ok so people need to pay attention because trash day in belmont may be changing you don't like change in belmont but it may be necessary so that's what we're going to talk about today now you've given presentations which people may or may not have seen  and there was i want to talk about the major factors the reason that a new collection method needs to be cut or do you want to answer that yes sure the so our current contract with russell we're in the final year of it right now we are going out to bid to explore various options available in collection also the c or test what the market will bear  as far as a competitive price so the options that we would be considering would be just traditional method which is what we're doing right now automation traditional pa throw and automation pages you're also looking at four options for the next bit and the factors that are being considered in this decision are going to be cost and what else so fosters a big one as far as collection goes the cost is for the our vendor vendor to go to everyone's individual residence at the curb and collect the trash and recycling and yard waste the disposal is a completely separate contract that we have with another under the collection is going to be looked upon as cost service and environmental impact once the bids come in  we will carefully assess and consider all the options available and the four cycle the making a decision to vote on a contract with a vendor of whatever them now there was a study done recently on belmont's current system and it was done by d s m of environmental services and mary beth is going to tell everyone about the major findings of this study so this study can be found on the website so it's a public works and when you get to that page there's a trash recycling page and at the bottom you can click on the presentation if you did not see it but i just i'm going to read so people know the two goals of this study one was to determine the volume of refuse and recycling set out by most belmont households so that the proper cot size could be offered under c based collection which would be an automated collection and the secondary goal was to evaluate belmont's performance at recycling and waste diversions and if to make correct recommendations if any so in they went around visually drew probably twelve of the sixteen routes and they recorded what was put out curbside and then for two days they did that but in they recorded it but they also put it in all the trash in the trash truck in all the recycling or cycling truck and they took it down to casella and they went through it right though to determine how well we recycle so the findings were are that i just want to read them so people can say that it's so for the volume the cart also thought that if you going to use automated collection you need a separate bulky collection and ball key if people know it's anything that doesn't fit in your trash barrel so right showing photos of ok their c r t s and their appliances so some of the about the recycling and the findings were that the set out rates were very high it was ninety one percent and when you because it's every other week they think that it's really at ninety five percent so i have a lot of people say oh we don't recycle well in belmont but they do this study ninety percent we do see and also that they said that belmont households are doing an excellent job recycling because we have very high recovery rates of seventy and seventy percent and we had a very low contamination rate of three or four percent well that's very good so those when you can read the rest it goes on and on but it's very interesting answer that's really neat to know that people actually studying trash and recycling we actually have some photos of trash that mary beth sent us trash and on top of the trash barrel there is a filter from it looks like any a conditioner and that is a bulky item and next to the trash barrel is a small plastic it looks like a little recycle file  want to compare it to that goes in the trash does not get recycled in the last you hold it for one of our recycle days one is in may and one is in october and then there is the two love seeds so yes belmont is unusual though because you can put out an unlimited number of bulky items yes ok now what's this an example of that is the correct size of a trash ba that's a good example of someone putting out their trash thirty two gallon trash barrel and i'm just going to mention it now that it's covered and it's covered yes there are many residents that have oversized barrels and we cannot send the hollaback unless the trash is put out regulation size so if you have an oversize barrel you need to put the bags tall kitchen bags in it because they won't pick it up so loose trash and small little grocery bags if they fall to the bottom i'm not going to get picked good to know what we have next that's one trash bag and it's at the curb i hope it was put out the morning of otherwise it would have been attacked by animals yes or yes what do we have next that's an oversize barrel so it looks very neat but we don't have automation so it becomes too heavy for the crew to pick up so it did they flip open the wheel it over flipped open the lid and they pull out the bag next ok again we whited out the hole yes but what are we showing here this is looks like a lot of trash right so if you see between the two arrows there's just bags and bags of trash so belmont is very unusual in that we have unlimited trash bags or barrels of trash but when we have been finding that if you do a clean out that you can't pull it up pull it out all at once because our hala just doesn't have the room to put it all in and finish the room so this is going to have to stop that's a very bad example yes yes next ok so  let us see so the red arrow is a very nice job of recycling the thirty two gallon barrel has a recycling sticker and the containers are in that  paper is enough we have now there are eighteen gallons but the bags the paper is in that size container and then the yellow arrows are pointing to bulky items which are two cheers and a bifold to war and the black is the trash barrels and some trash bags this is this is a lot of trash a lot of trash and they do actually take the chairs they do hopefully there are pickers and people in the right people come and take them that's great because reuse is better than throwing away ok what do we have next here now we have some recycling examples this is a bad be cycling example right you might say tell us why it's just it's disrespectful it's overflowing it was a windy day things would just fly everywhere yes it even separated it is and it isn't so a lot of residents that moved to belmont come from single stream communities and they feel that it's better they feel that they did it there they can do it here and that's not the case not the case so what would the collectors do ration like this sometimes they do the best of their ability and you know they'll probably put the paper in with the paper and the bill there's going to be some contamination  because that is not good i could go on for home of the show about the markets of recycling but residents should really follow the regulations there's a reason we don't do it to torture residents  do it because it gets the best bang for the buck for belmont ok here's another bad example ok this happens frequently it's that when people buy  plastic water bottles in the case or this i think is honesty yes they put the empties back into the case so this you have plastic wrap shrink wrap which you cannot put in your curbside recycling you need to bring that to the grocery store with you grocery bags to have it recycled the cardboard should go in with the paper it should be flatten and go in the paper and then all the bottles of tea could go into that then what we have next oh boy oh yeah so cardboard most of the calls coming in about recycling is for stream we do not have a rear packing truck for recycling we have a door strain and it's not rare packing what how much is a compact jay is the expert on trucks well there is some there are some compaction it's not like them or the trash truck but there are some pre production enough to break glass ok so the cardboard has to be less then three feet by three feet it needs to be flattened and you cannot use a cardboard as a receptive whether it's for recycling or trash they just won't take it right they won't leave it i do want to tell you that there are inspectors at the march and if you have well actually they're at the disposal facilities and if you have a certain amount of cardboard in them they get of warning and they could get fine is another bad example of overflowing and mixing yes do not put plastic in paper bags paper goes in paper bag plastic they did a good job on the first three and then i think get the and person did single stream recycling in put it in play yes that are see through in some parts of the country they do this here we do not  if you can see this person also thinks that paper towels and napkins can be recycled they cannot they can be composted thrown away any tissue napkin people tell anything that comes in touch with your body should be thrown out ok ok this they did a good job on the first arrow because that's all cone mingles that's axel and but on the second one it's all paper and we don't like paper in thirty two gallon containers the largest contain you can do with eighteen because it will get heavy and this is a thing i don't know why people know it is ok so we're back ok so now we're going to talk about all that was very educational another time i have to how you want to talk about composting because that's a whole other show now let's talk about the new collection methods this is really important the new collection methods that the town is considering which many other towns use are automated trash pickup and traditional so for viewers who aren't familiar with these can you explain as simply as possible what they are what these options are sure traditional is what we're doing right now it's typically a two man sometimes a three man operation a driver and a picker or two and they throw the trash into the back of the hopper and going to the next for a brew stop and so it's our current method that we're doing right now it's the easiest to deal with a lot of bulky items it's the easiest to deal with areas that are really congested and traffic one way traffic or whatever could be an issue it is the most expensive way though to collect trash it is the equipment is relatively the same as automated but you're dealing with two to three man operation or person operation opposed to automation which is a one person up and operated automation is a one driver drives on the curb side of the vehicle and it has an automated arm that reaches zero and picks up and it's a special that everyone gets a special bow it is a special barrel that would be a town issued barrel that the resident would have to pay for  container that would accommodate according to the study of all seventy six percent of the town that doesn't say it's going to accommodate them every week because there might be an option you know a situation where they entertain or they get a whole new dining room set menu to you know rid of the other or for whatever reason we understand that some people have the situation where the the barrel be enough so we're looking at overflow  situation that we're not one hundred percent sure because it's we call it the buffet style put it to the curb and it goes away so there's no way of really tracking how much bulky is out there bulky is something that we're looking at as to how we're going to manage in the next contract if there is going to be a call in either way if it's traditional or automated if it's automated eld if it's not called then it's it will be a specific day or whatever that we picked up but it will not be picked up by there another option that we're also considering this option for pages throw is more of it doesn't affect how it's collected just affects how it's paid for the pages throw method would the specific garbage bag it won't get picked up the there's different models of how that is done different communities close to us two different things the most you tell our viewers what is true and what is false about the about what was what you know what people are opposed to you know the reasons people are opposed i know you said there was a lot of there was some there was some feedback there we got that why are we looking at other options on the current option works just fine there's been some talk about the override that happened back in  one that how that's going to be handled the pages throw model or options that are out there that a lot of people are i would say that are not sure how that's going to work and with the overriding pages throw option it would you know the taxes and cost neutral thing has been tossed around so there's there's a lot of talk the the the one thing that at the end of the day as mr taylan say is that we have explored all the options that are available we're going to go out to bid for four options and we need a new contract with the hauler to pick up our trash whether it's traditional or automated the pay as you throw model can work right away or after the fact but at the end of the day we need a new any false information false yes that you've heard people say well we touched on a few things but i just want to tell people again that this is a collection contract so it's not recycling on change the recycling and and automation automated collection is more efficient than manual and i and j can speak to this nationally but in this little area of where we live more towns are going over to automated and the big players such as we smidge mint and republic they want a sixty four down automated trash picked up weekly and a ninety five gallon car picked up every other week for a single stream recycling that's the model that's being pushed right now so what do you think is the best option be our the direction that we're going to go and me time to be doing more public education is going to be a community forum september twenty fifth september twenty fifth as the next public forum to have a discussion on  the options so people who are concerned or interested should attend this forum yes and no be another one that has not been determined when but there will be another one  so you said that there is a link people can go to the website and yes so they can read about this study is how do they find it on the list so the easiest way that i can tell you is go to the town website go on the public works department and you come to the home page in the is for photos no six and there's one that says trash recycling and if you click that there's a whole bunch of links that have everything you want to know about trash recycling in belmont but at the bottom is this study in a couple of other a letter that was written when this first started by david kill about year ago and well i want to thank you both for coming on the show i hope that viewers benefited from all this information and i want to thank everyone for tuning in if you have any ideas for future shows you can email me belmont at wicked local dot com and i want to think the belmont media center for making this all possible