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City service review does not recommend outsourcing garbage collection

Service review contains 11 recommendations, including bi-weekly yard waste collection
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Outsourcing the city’s garbage collection is not one of the recommendations contained in the City of Guelph’s solid waste service review.

The Solid Waste Resources Business Service Review final report was released Thursday.

Eighteen months in the making, it contains 11 recommendations to improve the efficiency, productivity and service level of blue box recycling efforts.

The recommendations include expanding yard waste pick up from twice a year to bi-weekly.

Shortening the hours at the public drop-off facility is also an option moving forward.

Some feared the report might recommend outsourcing garbage collection to a private company as a cost saving measure, but that was not the case.

Other key recommendations contained in the report include:

  • Extending the life cycle of the waste collection trucks from seven to 10 years.

  • Phased in waste collection for multi-residential properties.

  • Consider changing public drop off hours of operation to optimize usage and efficiency. That could include reducing hours or adding more staff to help maintain current hours.

  • Move forward with the solid waste master plan that includes improving diversion rates and finding cost efficiencies.

  • Enhancements to the financial analysis and forecasting done in the solid waste division.

  • Create a solid waste financial reserve to help offset the volatility of the commodity market and reduce annual variance impacts.

Overall, the report shows the city’s solid waste division is performing well.

Where it is failing is in its materials recovery facility, where solid materials are sorted and recycled.

The report shows that the city’s blue box recycling is the biggest issue facing the department, losing $2.4 million a year.

“Analysis indicates that the City’s cost to process recyclable material at the Material Recovery Facility (MRF) is higher than the average cost of comparator municipalities and the tonnages processed are double on a per customer basis. These higher costs contribute to the ongoing financial challenges experienced by Solid Waste Resources,” says the report.

The report points out that the city is saving almost $750,000 for each of the next three years after it was able to cancel a bad contract to recycle garbage from Simcoe County that was a big reason that the solid waste recycling program was losing the amount of money it is.

That deal with Simcoe County was previously called “an awfully bad contract” by a senior city staffer and is seen as the main reason it costs Guelph 93 times what it costs comparator municipalities to process recyclables.

“Benchmarking and data analysis indicated that the City’s cost to process recyclable material at the MRF (Materials Recovery Facility) is higher than the average cost of the comparator municipalities, with the average processing cost being less than $1 per tonne of material collected. The City’s processing costs are an average of $93 per tonne of material collected,” the report states.

Getting out of the Simcoe contract will help that situation considerably, the report shows.

The report puts the price tag at implementing all the recommendations for the materials recovery facility at $540,000 over the next nine years. Some of those initiatives have already been put in place.

The report shows that Guelph was diverting 59 percent of its garbage (by weight) away from landfills in 2016, which is a high number compared to comparative municipalities.

But it is 10 percent less than what it was diverting in 2013.

That figure is partially attributed to lighter packaging and the drop in newspapers being recycled, but also to improper sorting of recyclables.

The report recommends a public engagement process to help increase the amount and quality of blue box recycling.

The city spent $133,000 on a consultant to help complete the review, which goes before council at its May 28 meeting.


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Tony Saxon

About the Author: Tony Saxon

Tony Saxon has had a rich and varied 30 year career as a journalist, an award winning correspondent, columnist, reporter, feature writer and photographer.
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