Why are some Kansas Citians still not using recycling carts months into rollout?

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Kansas Citians are mostly thrilled with the city’s new method for collecting recyclables, city officials claim.

What’s not to like? People can now recycle a lot more in the new blue and yellow 65-gallon carts on wheels that the city bought for $5.4 million. It delivered 158,487 carts out of the 162,000 households serviced.

Roll them to the curb on garbage day, and off go your pop cans, cardboard, cereal boxes and plastic bottles to the recycling center. The carts make for a cleaner city, officials say, because there is less litter blowing about from the lidless bins they are replacing.

And more recycling means less trash bound for the landfill for a green win-win.

“A lot of my constituents are happy to have them,” 4th District Councilman Eric Bunch told Public Works Director Michael Shaw at a council committee meeting in July. “No more aluminum cans rolling around the intersection in the middle of the night, waking us up.”

Shaw replied, “That was intentional as far as our plan to reduce litter.”

But not everyone is a fan. Among the critics are some inner city residents and workers who dump the contents of the carts into the recycling trucks.

Anna Joy Walker on East 41st Street, for one, is all for a cleaner city but calls the new containers “a pain in the ass.”

Her house is on a rise, so her big recycling container sits unused on the front lawn because she doesn’t want to roll it down a dozen steps to the curb.

“It’s clunky,” Walker said. “I don’t like the noise.”

So she drags her recycling to the curb in a plastic leaf bag.

William Wells’ house on Prospect Avenue also sits up on a hillside. His recycling cart has sat on the right side of his porch, unused, since he got it.

No way, he said, is he going up and down his 17 stairs with that thing, wheels or no wheels.

“In my case, I’m handicapped,” Wells said. “It’s inconvenient for me. They’re not going to come up the hill and get it. And I’m not going to go down them steps and put trash in it.”

He, instead, does as he’s always done. He double-bags his trash and recycling and his son hauls the bags to the curb for trash day.

Mixed reviews

But many are fans. The yellow lids keep the recycling dry and prevent paper, aluminum and plastic from flying around and littering the streets and sidewalks. The big capacity means fewer trips to the curb.

People can skip a week

“I don’t produce a lot (of recycling). I only put it out about once a month,” said Terri Bradford who lives on the 3900 block of Forest Avenue. “It sits right next to the garbage cans. I think it’s a great idea for keeping the neighborhood cleaner.”

Christine Detrick, a neighbor from 43rd Street, sat with Walker on Walker’s front porch. She’s OK with the new containers. She likes that they keep the recycling dry.

But on the six days of the week they aren’t being picked up at the curb, they can be an eyesore if you have no garage or enclosure to hide them in.

“I have a good friend. He’s 82. He said there’s no place to put the bin,” Detrick said.

All of this may seem foreign to people who live in Kansas City’s suburbs, who are used to stuffing their recycling material and trash in separate carts that they wheel down their driveways once a week. On garbage day, one truck stops to pick up the recycling and one comes for the garbage.

The driver works alone, controlling a mechanical arm that grabs the carts and dumps their contents into the top of the truck. It then sets the carts down and off the trucks go down the block to the next house, and the next.

But that level of efficiency is not easily accomplished in Kansas City’s older neighborhoods, where most people don’t have two-and three-stall garages. Or any garage at all.

So GFL Environmental, the company the city contracts to pick up the recycling, uses a different style of truck that requires more manpower to dump the contents of the recycling carts into the rear of the truck.

As the driver rolls down the street, two workers take turns wheeling carts to the back of the truck, where they are encouraged to use a mechanical tipper to dump the contents of the carts into the hopper.

But often they dump them by hand. One worker called the smaller bins from before, “quicker, lighter, easier.”

The bigger containers are harder on their backs. If the containers get too heavy, they do use the tippers, but that eats up time, they said.

“We wish they would use them ... and it’s best for their safety and health, and that’s very important to us,” said city spokeswoman Sherae Honeycutt.

But as GFL’s workers are not city employees, they can’t be required to use the tippers.

Honeycutt said the city has gotten mostly positive reviews from residents about the recycling carts. Only 2% of residents have opted out so far, she said.

Among the complaints is that the carts take up a lot of space for people who live on a small lot and have no place to keep them except in plain view.

As for people who don’t like them, there’s good news. They don’t have to use them, she said, and can continue putting out their recycling the way they always have in the past.

“If you don’t want the cart, there’s ways that you can send the cart back,” she said.

According to the city’s website, residents can have the cart removed by following the instructions on the myKCMO app or by calling the city action center number at 311.

Next up: Trash carts will be on the way as soon as the city finds a way to pay for them. That will end the current system of limiting residents to leaving two plastic bags at the curb — no more than 40 pounds each — for workers to heave into the back of trucks.

That is if dogs or varmints haven’t gotten there first, tearing open the bags and leaving the contents strewn across people’s yards.

Unlike recycling, city crews collect the garbage, except in neighborhoods that provide their own trash service, and the city’s public works director is hopeful their work will be easier once the trash carts are here.

“I think a lot of residents really want trash carts,” Shaw told The Star earlier this year. “It’s more work for us. It’s not as easy to do, but it’s not about the collection. It’s about the quality of the service, and it’s about the cleanliness of our neighborhoods.”