Nearly a year after St. Louis ended alley recycling because of widespread contamination, a city task force is recommending the biggest overhaul of the city’s refuse collection system in decades: replacing alley dumpsters with universal curbside roll carts for trash and recycling.
The 13-member task force, formed to study the city’s recycling system, recently released a preliminary report, tentatively titled “Bringing Recycling Home.” Its central recommendation calls for phasing out alley dumpsters and expanding roll-cart service citywide while allowing residents to request a second recycling cart at no additional cost.
The proposed system would provide “improved services and accountability, less illegal dumping, cleaner alleys, increased waste diversion, reduced landfill use, increased public participation and reduced recycling contamination,” according to the report.
In presenting the recommendations to Mayor Cara Spencer, Sustainability Director Elysia Russell said the task force wanted to make recycling easier and more accessible.
“We decided that we really wanted to bring recycling home,” Russell said. “We didn’t like the idea that recycling was far away.”
The recommendations come nearly a year after the city ended alley recycling and shifted residents to curbside recycling and neighborhood drop-off locations. City officials said the move was intended to reduce contamination caused by residents mixing trash with recyclable materials while making better use of taxpayer dollars.
According to the report, only about 20% of St. Louis homes currently use roll carts for waste collection. Residents who do not have curbside recycling now rely on about 40 drop-off recycling locations throughout the city.
The task force concluded that the city’s six-month experience with drop-off recycling demonstrated both the strengths and limitations of the current system.
Contamination in collected recycling has fallen 83% since the city shifted to drop-off sites, while the amount of recycled material has increased 8% compared with previous years. By no longer paying recycling fees for highly contaminated loads that ultimately ended up in landfills, the city has saved an average of about $100,000 per month, according to the report.
The task force concluded that drop-off recycling locations alone are not sufficient because only a fraction of residents make the trip to recycle. The report says the current system captures recyclable materials only from residents who are willing and able to make the extra effort.
Although task force members largely agreed on the recommendation, they also acknowledged that replacing alley dumpsters with curbside carts could create challenges for some residents.
Spencer noted that roll carts might not work well for older residents and people with physical disabilities or mobility challenges.
Task force member Tom Bratkowski, an Old North St. Louis resident, raised similar concerns.
“We have hills where there might be 15 steps that the person would have to get their cart down,” Bratkowski said. “It’s going to stay out there on the street continuously. It’s not like we all have front driveways.”
The city has been collecting waste from alley dumpsters since the 1980s, a system now used by few large U.S. cities. According to the report, St. Louis is the largest city still relying on the system, and more than 50% of the material placed in recycling dumpsters was consistently contaminated, forcing much of it into landfills while the city continued paying recycling processing fees.
Task force member Joe Cunningham, program manager at Operation Brightside, acknowledged that the current system offers conveniences. Residents do not have to remember collection schedules, and if one dumpster is full, they can use another nearby. Still, Cunningham concluded that alley dumpsters also create environmental, sanitary and safety concerns.
The task force also concluded that public education will be critical if the city ultimately adopts the recommendations.
“Strategic investment in marketing and education will help ensure the City’s updates to refuse collection are understood, adopted, and effective,” the report states.
Several key questions remain unanswered, including how much it would cost to replace alley dumpsters with universal roll carts, how the transition would be phased in and when any changes might take effect. The preliminary recommendations do not propose increasing residents’ refuse fees, but the report does not include implementation cost estimates.
The recommendations are preliminary and nonbinding. The task force is awaiting the results of a roll-cart feasibility study before issuing final recommendations later this year.
Sylvester Brown Jr. is the Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.