Yapping about Yard Waste

Our work session today was all about Yard Waste, what to do in the short term and what to do in the long term.

Our yard waste program is in an extremely challenging position, and something has to change. Our current policy, where anyone (including contractors) can put an unlimited amount of yard waste on the curb and have us pick it up, is not sustainable. Take a look at some of the pictures below to see what our crews have had to remove. This costs real money; in addition to the labor involved, we have to pay tipping fees at a yard waste dump to dispose of it. The tree below cost us almost $500 to remove! Something has to change.

The current system is DRAMATICALLY inequitable. A very small percentage of people/neighborhoods in town make up the majority of the costs associated with this program. Everyone else (with a townhome, for example) is basically subsidizing large lot homes with big yards, and older neighborhoods with lots of trees. At the same time, moving towards a tiered system is administratively infeasible (is the yard waste truck operator supposed to look up your address and see how much yard waste you paid to have haul away?)

Oh, even worse: Our current fee structure only collections 70% of the cost of our yard waste program, with the rest being subsidized by the general fund. That’s bad.

Long term, there are environmental challenges with our current on curb collection. We are the last major municipality (Zebulon is the other) to do on curb collection. I suspect Jordan Lake Rules will require us to move to containerization.

In the short term, expect that:

– A new limit of 2 cubic yards of yard waste will be picked up with our current service. This is approximately how much fits in the bed of a pickup truck. It’s a lot.

– Above 2 cubic yards, there will be a fee: $50 for each additional 2 cubic yards

– Education campaign around rules.

– No more comingling of types of yard waste (separate piles please)

– Slight reduction in size of limbs picked up (6 ft long down from 8 ft)

– 48 hour rule enforced

– Schedule might vary throughout the year (there is no point in running yard waste trucks weekly during the winter, for example)

– Prohibition on contractors (aka, landscapers) from utilizing the residential yard waste service. We pay tipping fees to dump this stuff off, and we can not subsidize private businesses in that fashion.

Long term, we did *not* (yet) give direction to move to containerization. But, I do think the writing is on the wall with this one. We’ll evaluate the impact these changes have on the program, and revisit the topic in a years time.

Also an issue: setting up a yard waste transfer station/convivence center. If we start charging extra for large piles of yard waste, we want to give people an option of somewhere to take it for free.

As always, let me know if you have any questions. Please consider sharing this post to your neighborhood (especially if you are heavy users of the yard waste service). And please sign up for my mailing list at https://visionofthepeak.com if you’d like more updates like this one.