nothin 7,300 Toters Land In New Haven | New Haven Independent

7,300 Toters Land In City

Melissa Bailey Photo

New brown trash bins are set to land on East Rock and Newhallville doorsteps this weekend, as the city moves forward with a plan to save money by getting people to recycle more household waste.

The 7,300 bins will be delivered to all households along the Tuesday pickup route, city officials announced at a press event Friday at Department of Public Works headquarters at 34 Middletown Ave. The bins were delivered by workers from the California-based Golden States Company, a subcontractor for the Toter Company.

The 48-gallon brown bins will be used for trash, freeing up the 96-gallon blue trash toters to be used for recycling instead.

People on the Tuesday route will be the second group to make the toter switcheroo, which aims to give people more room to recycle their cans, plastic jugs and newspapers. The city saves $106 per ton of waste that’s diverted from trash can to recycling bin, according to DPW chief John Prokop. That’s because the city pays to have each ton of trash hauled away and burned in Bridgeport or Lisbon, but the city gets paid for each ton of recycling.

Manuel Garcia tosses a Toter on top of a stack.

People on the Monday trash pickup route in Westville already made the switch last August, despite some confusion about when exactly to make the transfer. Office of Sustainability chief Christine Eppstein Tang said the city learned a lesson” from that debut.

Now, each toter will come with clear instructions on how to make the change, she said.

If you get a new brown bin, here’s what you’re supposed to do: Continue your normal waste throw-out routine for Tuesday.

Then, on Tuesday, the city will slap stickers on your 96-gallon blue bins, designating them for recycling. After trash pickup day, you can start the new routine: Put your trash in the brown bin, and start filling up that huge blue bin with recyclable material.

The week starting Monday, May 30, you can roll out your new brown bin filled with trash, and the big blue bin filled with recycling. Because of the Memorial Day holiday, pickup day will be Wednesday, June 1 instead of Tuesday, May 31.

Capisce? If you’re confused, call public works at (203) 946‑7700, or ask your alderman.

City trash-haulers will be on the lookout for recyclers who make the switch too early, and will do their best to determine which bin is filled with trash.

And what about those little blue bins (pictured) you’ve been using for recycling? You can keep them for convenient in-house recycling storage, or you can throw them in your big blue bin to be cannibalized, err … recycled.

Mayor John DeStefano said he chose the former when he and his wife, Kathy, made the switch last August as part of the Monday route. He said the switch has really affected how Kathy and I throw out our trash.”

He said when the city rolled out the big blue trash bins in 2004, it sent the wrong message: Dump all your waste in here. Having a bigger bin encourages people to think about recycling eligible waste.

Typically, 60 percent of the waste stream is recyclable. The city now does single-stream recycling, meaning you don’t have to sort anything beyond separating trash from recyclables.

What can you put in the recycling? Click here for a list. It includes plastic, metal and paper. Some caveats: No oily pizza boxes. No plastic bags. Separate lids from jars. And rinse out jars, to eliminate food contamination in the recycling stream.

The change-up on the Monday route has already had a dramatic effect, according to DeStefano: The recycling rate tripled in Westville, to 30 percent of waste. That is expected to save the city $100,000 by the end of this fiscal year.

Now the city is hoping the Tuesday route, which covers parts of East Rock and Newhallville, will follow suit. Those neighborhoods were chosen through a citywide competition. East Rock Alderman Matt Smith (at left in photo, with DeStefano), who led his neighbors in a fierce battle with the East Shore, congratulated his constituents Friday on their victory.

The city aims to phase in the new toters throughout the city in three-month increments, starting in August and ending in the spring of 2012. When all the neighborhoods have switched over, the new system should save the city $600,000 per year, the mayor calculated.

The savings take into account the cost of the toters, which are $56 each, and the cost of issuing bonds to pay for them.

The city aims to boost its recycling rate to 30 percent in 2012, and to 58 percent in 2020.

The city has a long way to go: right now, the Tuesday route recycles only 10 percent of its waste, and the Wednesday route recycles a measly 3.5 percent, according to Tang.

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