Thursday, May 24, 2007

Borough Council - Want to really reduce trash? Negotiate another deal!

After the recycling, and after composting, there is still trash to be placed on the curb.

A majority of Borough Council, at last night's meeting voted to retain the in-house waste removal program.

Council, it's time to help us help ourselves.

Find a trash compactor manufacturer who will give deep discounts on trash compactors for the citizens of Phoenixville.

Trash compactors are costly, ranging from around $500 to over $1,000. However, the 5:1 compact ratio on some of these machines means that 5 bags of trash are reduced to one bag when compacted! Reduction of the amount of waste hauled is the only way we can ever hope to reduce costs.

In a Borough of approximately 5,000 homes, an advance sign-up would give an indication of how many people would take part in the program and may provide incentive for a manufacturer to do business on a somewhat unusual level such as this proposal.

Please have someone contact me if the Borough is unable to support this suggestion.

I may just step up and do it myself.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why not remap the collection routes have 3 zones instead of 4? It used to be 10 bags and now it's 5. Why not have a little good faith shown on this contract and have the workers and the public works department step up and show the people of Phoenixville how hard 9 people can work - how much they really want those jobs with the health care , vacation and retirement benefits that most of the occupants of the homes they service could only dream of having.

Anonymous said...

It's not the number of bags that the borough is charged for when it goes to the land fill but rather the weight. Compact 100 pounds into 1 bag or 20 pounds into 5 bags it is still 100 pounds!

Karen said...

From somewhere or by reading something years ago, I've carried forward the impression that the trash tipping fees were based on volume rather than weight.

I just spoke with Landchester Landfill and confirmed the point mentioned by Anonymous 12:29 a.m.

I was wrong.

A trash compactor, while it may have been useful in reducing the number of bags under the PAYT program will not reduce costs for the in house trash hauling program.

I stand corrected on the trash compactors.

I am, however, going to continue thinking of ways to reduce costs for our taxpayers.

Anonymous said...

Also, the bags for the compactor are approx 1$ per bag on top of the trash fee? So we pay more money? It never ends.

Anonymous said...

do some research phoenixville, what does

West Chester do
Coatesville
Tredyffrin
East Town
Kennett Square
Norristown
Avondale
Pottstown

why reinvent the wheel?

phoenixville has a cdc and a borough manager why is this stuff so hard

im sure the pa dcd etc would be happy to help