Feedback from cities

09 Aug 2024

Cities play an important role in implementing recycling services, from contracting for service delivery to face-to-face interactions with residents about these services.

County staff met with city managers in May 2024 to discuss the highest impact zero-waste actions presented in the Plan to Reinvent Hennepin County’s Solid Waste System(External link). The city managers discussed the needed investment in resources to maximize curbside programs, support for the county leading on organized waste collection efforts, interest in exploring more about recycling recovery facilities and how this technology can supplement curbside collection, and that the county can help cities communicate to residents the value of organics programs.

Staff also engaged city recycling coordinators on select strategies that affect their cities and residents – both required strategies that the county must implement and optional strategies the county is considering for implementation.

Staff held in-person and virtual meetings in May and June 2024 and sent a follow-up survey after the meetings. Cities that did not attend a meeting were invited to meet individually with county staff.

Of the 44 cities in Hennepin County, 31 cities representing 98% of the county’s population gave feedback through one or more of the input opportunities. Cities gave feedback on the following strategies:

Same-day collection

Required strategy #30: Collect recyclables, organics, and trash on the same day.

Recycling, trash, and organics are already collected on the same day in most cities. Most of the cities that have materials collected on different days did not express opposition to changing collection. For cities that don’t already have same-day collection in place, the change would require amending their ordinances and/or changing hauler licensing requirements.

Organics recycling collection in all cities with population over 5,000

Required strategy #40: Make residential curbside organics collection available in cities with a population greater than 5,000 by 2030.

Hennepin County’s recycling ordinance (Ordinance 13) requires cities with a population over 10,000 to make organics recycling service available to all households with curbside recycling, so this strategy would only affect Hennepin County cities with populations of 5,000 to 9,999 residents.

Some of the affected cities have already established organics recycling drop-off sites and wanted to know whether the drop-off site would need to be maintained after implementing curbside collection. Maintaining these drop-off sites would not be required but would be encouraged.

Cities with organized recycling collection see the benefit of also organizing organics, but they would like to maintain open collection for trash. Some of the affected cities said it would make sense to pursue organics collection as part of their new recycling contract and plan to include curbside organics collection in their recycling contract renewal discussions.

Support the county could provide to help the transition to curbside collection includes:

  • Working with cities to incorporate organics collection into their new hauling contracts.
  • Continuing to provide SCORE funding to cities to reduce the cost residents pay for curbside organics service and provide more funding to cities that implement organized collection.
  • Assisting with the development and distribution of education and outreach materials.
  • Encouraging participation by providing free supplies and incentivizes to residents, such as food scrap collection containers, initial supply of compostable plastic bags, and compost.

Using compost in construction and landscaping projects

Required strategy #55: Require food-derived compost in county construction and landscaping projects.

Although this strategy applies to counties in the Solid Waste Management Plan, the Hennepin County Zero Waste Plan extends this to cities. So, this is considered a required strategy for cities. Some cities already require compost to be used in their construction and landscaping projects.

There was some concern about whether there would be an adequate supply of material if all Hennepin County cities are required to use food-derived compost in their projects. However, this could be beneficial in terms of driving market development.

Cities stressed that clear specifications from the county would make it much easier to get internal support to implement this requirement and to ensure they are compliant. They suggested the county draft a specification and send it to the cities for review. Suggested elements of the specification include:

  • Defining food-derived compost
  • Types of projects that must use food-derived compost
  • Best and/or required applications for food-derived compost
  • How much compost has to be used in a given project or application to be compliant
  • Guidance on the types of equipment that are most effective for applying compost
  • Any exemptions, such as if the cost of food-derived compost increases project costs by a certain threshold amount

Cities encouraged the county to provide presentations and other outreach to the cities to facilitate implementation.

Managing wood waste

Required strategy #45: Develop plans to prevent and manage wood waste in each county and throughout the region.

The responses related to this strategy reinforce the need for better coordination of wood waste management and the need for more reliable processing options.

Some cities asked for more specifics of what would be required. Cities said the county could help with this strategy by providing additional disposal options.

Curbside set-out for reuse

Optional strategy #27: Establish a curbside set-out day to allow residents to set out used items for reuse.

A few cities expressed interest in this strategy, and several cities have recently worked with a nonprofit organization to collect some items for reuse at their cleanup events.

Cities had many questions about how this would be implemented. Cities raised concerns about costs, staff capacity, vendor capacity to pick up items, weather, quality of materials set out, and how much of the material set out would actually get reused.

Cities expressed the most interest in the following approaches to citywide reuse programs:

  • Adding a reuse component to the annual cleanup drop-off event, which are already popular and well-used.
  • Combining a curbside reuse event with a citywide garage sale and annual clean up drop-off event.

Help the county could provide for these programs include creating a list of the most popular or valuable reuse items and coordinating a curbside reuse day with a county operated hazardous waste collection event in the city to promote reuse, proper disposal of waste, and increase participation in these activities.

Contract for residential recycling and organics

Optional strategy #33 : Contract for residential recycling and organics by 2030.

Several cities that currently have open collection for organics are interested in exploring organized collection or are already in discussion with their haulers about changing to organized collection. Others stated that they are not considering the change at this time. Only one city has open collection for recycling. Several cities said the county putting requirements in place would pave the way for city staff and city council members to make the change. Cities said the county could provide staffing support to answer calls from residents about this change.