Big changes are coming to Henderson trash collection in July
HENDERSON, Ky. − New city-issued garbage cans and new regulations about trash disposal are coming to Henderson residents next month.
Residents will be required to place all trash they want collected in the city-issued bins with the lid closed. City sanitation crews will empty trash from bins with the aid of a mechanical device, called a tipper arm, that will be attached to the rear of each of the city’s existing garbage trucks.
“Trash not placed in the (new) bins will not be collected,” the city declared in a news release.
The move might seem innocuous, but it’s the rare municipal action that affects nearly every household in the city — more than 10,000 in all.
Outside of changes in city taxes or utility rates, “It’s probably the biggest change” by the city that Hendersonians will have experienced in recent memory, City Manager Buzzy Newman said.
And while there has been support for the move expressed on social media, there has also been a range of concerns, from what people are to do with their existing garbage cans to whether one (albeit very large) trash bin will hold a week’s garbage.
The City of Henderson announced that beginning the week of July 10, most households in the city will receive a new 96-gallon rolling, lidded trash collection bin.
A key exception will be apartment complexes where the landlord provides a dumpster for residents to use. City commercial trash customers also won’t be affected.
Bin details
The bins will be delivered to residents’ homes at no charge. If someone needs an additional can, there will be a $5 monthly charge for a minimum of six months.
However, city Sanitation Superintendent David Steele suggests that households try out the big new bins for a week or more to determine whether they need more than one.
At 96 gallons, the new bins are two to three times larger than most of the outdoor garbage cans that retailer Lowe’s labels as “extra large,” with capacities ranging from 32 to 45 gallons.
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The new bins will be big enough to hold about seven standard 13-gallon kitchen trash bags, Steele said. That’s one bag for every day of the week.
City officials noted that residents can also reduce their volume of trash by recycling appropriate refuse (such as cardboard and corrugated boxes, household paper and newsprint, glass bottles, clean metal cans and No. 1 and 2 plastic containers), either by placing it in the blue rolling recycling bins provided by the city or delivering sorted recycling on weekdays to the county recycling center at 398 Sam Ball Way off Airline Road.
The new trash bins will be similar to but much larger than the 35-gallon blue rolling recycling bins that the city began furnishing several years ago. The new bins will be green with tan hinged lids to differentiate them from the recycling bins.
The bins will feature the city seal on each side as well as a radio frequency identification device (RFID) that will tie each bin to the residence to which it has been delivered.
Members of the Henderson City Commission voted 5-0 at a meeting on May 9 to purchase the new bins — 12,000 in all.
What’s behind it?
The overriding purpose is to reduce injuries — both short- and long-term — to city sanitation workers as well as provide relief to short-staffed crews. But officials believe there will be a variety of other benefits as well, such as reducing loose trash.
“What started this is, last summer we were at a point in staffing where we usually run five trucks with two men on the back and one driver, but we were down to four trucks with one man on the back of each truck,” Steele said in an interview last week. “It’s hard to keep people out there that do that job every day,” particularly since some veteran sanitation workers have retired.
With a shortage of sanitation workers, the burden of manually hefting trash bags or unloading garbage cans into trucks became exhausting for some remaining crew members, especially in the summer.
“We actually had to call an ambulance for one worker that was heat-related,” Steele said. “We started looking at different ways to make the work safer.”
Officials were also concerned by injuries that sanitation workers experience, from back or knee strains to workers requiring stitches after being cut by large shards of glass inside a plastic trash bag — even being stuck by syringes improperly disposed of by people with diabetes or possibly users of illegal drugs.
“We’ve had a lot of needle sticks” that have required workers to undergo a series of medical tests over four months to determine whether they have contracted hepatitis or even HIV-AIDS.
Steele said. (So far, none have.)
Overall, the sanitation department “is the highest worker’s compensation department in the city,” he said.
“Sanitation workers in general are one of the most hazardous duty jobs there is in a municipality,” Newman said.
Search for solutions
“We could look at an outside contractor,” Steele said. A report by the Kentucky League of Cities found that as of mid-2019, private waste management companies handled some or all of the waste collection in 63% of Kentucky’s 416 cities, including 69% of cities with populations between 20,000 and 99,999.
But Henderson officials were concerned that residents would experience a decline in the quality of trash pick-up, such as losing call-back service for missed garbage collection.
“I think the (city) Board of Commissioners has always wanted control over our destiny in terms of sanitation,” Newman said.
Steele said officials reached out to other cities to learn how they handle trash collection and learned that most had already adopted mechanical means of lifting bins and emptying trash into garbage trucks — sometimes with one-person crews with no worker on the ground.
“I grew up in the Netherlands with this system,” one person commented on a Facebook post announcing the city’s plans. “I was baffled when I first came here and (saw) how it was done.”
“We’re way behind the times,” Steele said.
Ultimately, officials settled on a hybrid solution — retaining sanitation workers who will wheel the new bin behind the truck, operate a lever to have the tipper arm lift and empty the bin into the truck, then wheel the bins back to their original position.
“They’ll not be picking up (bags or garbage cans) physically and dumping like it has been,” Steele said.
“We’re hoping that with better working conditions, longevity (of sanitation employees) will be better,” he said.
The goal is to continue using three-person crews on each truck. “We’ve not budgeted for any reduction in staff,” he said. Adding the tipper arm to trucks “just puts us in a position (to work more safely) if we can’t find staff.”
Steele said trash pickup will continue in alleys in older portions of the city.
By requiring residents to place all trash in the lidded containers, Steele is hopeful that garbage-related litter will be reduced in the city. (In one recent incident, numerous plastic trash bags were left curbside on one city street; two people were seen opening the bags, presumably looking for worthwhile items, and left trash pulled from the bags strewn along the curb.)
“What the goal is, is to have a cleaner environment for the city and a safer environment for workers,” he said.“I personally support this move primarily due to the needle sticks, back strains, loose and stray garbage, and other adverse conditions and ailments our sanitation workers encounter on a regular basis,” Mayor Brad Staton said in a Facebook post last week. “The new bins will allow for tipper arms to help make the job less painful and cumbersome for our employees.”
His post drew more than 140 comments, both applauding the plan and expressing concerns, in just two days.
More details
The city is purchasing the 12,000 rollout containers for $679,955 — an average of $56.66 per trash bin — from Schaefer Plastics North America LLC, which will be responsible for delivering the bins to Henderson homes. (A comparable sized wheeled trash can from another manufacturer is priced at $136 at Lowe’s.)
Schaefer submitted the second-lowest bid from among six bidders. The low bidder, IPL Marco, bid $1.71 less than Schaefer for each fully assembled bin.
However, in a memo to Newman, city Public Works Director Brian Williams and Steele said IPL Marco failed to include the handheld bin scanners that the city specified in its request for proposal (RFP) to prospective bidders.
The two scanners and an asset management software package that Schaefer will provide will be used to keep track of each bin’s serial number and assigned street address.
The Schaefer bins also proved superior to other models and come with 10-year “normal use” warranty per bin, according to Williams and Steele’s memo. (That would exclude unusual damage, such as from someone emptying hot charcoal into a bin, burning it.)
The city specified in its RFP that the trash carts, when empty, must remain stable in winds of up to 36 mph from any direction. City staff tested sample containers from all six bidders.
“All empty containers were set out on a day (when) winds were blowing between 30-40 miles per hour, and the Schaefer container was the only one standing at the end of the test,” the memo said. “Also, (we) used our recycle contractor to test each cart in the pickup-empty-and set-back-in-place process. There was a definite difference in how each container responded to the process. Again, the Schaefer cart came out on top. From what we have learned and seen, the Schaefer container is the better value for the dollar.”
Further, “References were checked on customers using the Schaefer container and they were more than satisfied with their purchase. The Schaefer container is also the current cart the City of Henderson is using for our recycling program, and we have found no issues with the containers,” Williams and Steele stated in their memo.
“In speaking with area contractors, we learned that Schaefer containers are being used widely in the area and these carts have been in use for 15+ years and are still being used,” the memo said.
Schaefer is to distribute some 10,300 bins to homes the week of July 10. “The manufacturer believes it can distribute all cans in one week,” Steele said.
The remaining 1,700 bins will be stored until a household requests an additional bin or as new homes are built.
If residents have any questions or concerns, they are asked to contact the City’s Sanitation Department at (270) 854-2064. Steele said last week that his department was initially fielding 40 to 50 calls per day on the matter.
Meanwhile, he said, “We are looking to purchase one automated truck with a side arm that could be operated by one person,” much as the city’s recycling collection contractor uses.
City officials are also on the lookout for attractive trash bins with weighted bases for downtown streets that can be emptied by such a truck.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Big changes are coming to Henderson trash collection in July
