Temporary Increase in Waste Management's
Recycling Charge

(Port Orchard, WA) – Waste Management’s curbside garbage and recycling customers will soon be seeing a change to their bills, another result of the downturn in the economy. Since 2003, unincorporated Kitsap County curbside recycling customers have benefited from the sale of the materials they recycled.

Waste Management collects recyclables and currently charges $4.05/month for this service. This pays for the truck and labor to move recyclables from the curb to a central facility where they are loaded into trailers to ship to a processing facility.

The processor sorts the recyclables and sells them to manufacturers to make new products. The net profits from these sales have been rebated to customers monthly since 2003 in the form of a commodity credit.

The commodity credit has lowered curbside recycling bills an average of $1.34/month over the last 6 years.

In early 2008, the value of recyclables was at historic highs. Then, in late 2008 and early 2009, the economic downturn decreased the manufacturing demand for and therefore the value of recyclables.

The bad news is that the change in recyclable values in these two years will change the commodity credit on customers bills from $1.60/month credit from the past year to a charge of $1.19/month for one year starting in November 2009.

The good news is that recyclable markets are bouncing back and the value of recyclables is increasing. This should result in a return to a credit on bills starting in November 2010.

Putting this in perspective, this is one bad year in a good approach that has resulted in about a $96 savings over the past 6 years for recycling customers. And at $5.24/month, curbside recycling is still a much better deal than paying to dispose of an equal volume of garbage.

A potential way to turn this temporary set back into cost savings is to recycle more and reduce garbage collection from weekly to every other week, or downsize from 64 gallon to 32 gallon can. Rates are available on Waste Management’s website at www.wmnorthwest.com/washington.html.

For other information on waste reduction and recycling, visit the Kitsap County Solid Waste webpage at www.kitsapgov.com/sw.

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To contact the Public Communications Manager, 
call Doug Bear at 360-337-4598 or email: dbear@co.kitsap.wa.us