MSW Management | Waste Bins: Don't Judge a Cart By Its Cover

SUBSCRIBE

COMMENT
ON THIS
ARTICLE

CREATE A LINK
TO THIS ARTICLE
ON YOUR SITE

There’s a whole lot more than trash that goes into garbage carts, especially if you’re ordering them by the tens of thousands.

By DeWitt Smith

Trash carts are a big business, especially if you consider that most households in the United States have at least tharee carts: one for trash, one for recyclables, and one for yardwaste. At a minimum cost of $60 a pop, we’re talking millions and millions here.

By interviewing the municipal managers and private haulers who order this equipment, MSW Management learned about the many different factors that go into the decision-making process when purchasing carts. The immediate, obvious factors are cost and delivery.

But like other pieces of equipment, geography plays a big role in this decision, too. In Miami, for instance, the carts need to have lids that close automatically so they don’t fill up with water during the rainy season (when sudden cloudbursts leave streets flooded in a half-hour). In the Midwest, carts need to be heavy enough so that the winds don’t blow empty ones all over neighborhoods and streets and make them road hazards. In the north, the carts have to be strong enough not to crack and disintegrate in the freezing cold.

On top of the climate considerations, the carts have to be easy enough for residents to handle and roll out to the curb for pickup.

Who knew buying a trash cart could be this complex?

Well, for one, Skip Berg knows. Having worked in the industry for more than 35 years, Berg is director of business development and collection equipment at Labrie Environmental Group. Labrie, the big Canadian firm, makes the garbage trucks that pick up these carts. And Berg has seen the evolution of cart-making over the past quarter-century.

“In the ’70s, the technology for molding and making large plastic containers was developed in the United States. This development was not for a residential roll-out cart, but for a carry-out barrel. This was the age before trucks were automated to pick up the carts,” Berg explains. “Back then, a garbage-truck man walked into the yard and carried out the trash can.”

At the same time, injection-molding cans started appearing from such European makers as Schaefer and Otto Environmental Systems. The US manufacturers were busy developing their own technology—Ameri-Kart, for one, and Toter, which is one of the predominant brands, for another. In fact, Toter has become a generic name, the same way that Kleenex has.

Cart makers have to start with a design, and a design mold is expensive. For instance, a single design mold can cost $500,000.

Then the manufacturer has to decide which type of molding is going to suit its needs: rotational, a method by which spinning forces the plastic into the mold; blow molding, in which air blows the plastic into the mold; or injection molding, where molten plastic is injected at high pressure into a mold.

“Each one of these processes has pros and cons,” Berg says. “It depends on the use. It can depend on specific things, such as a stability test: Can the cart stand up when it’s empty? Can the cart withstand cold, heat, wind, and rain?”

And of course all the cart makers tout the strength of their products.

Rotation manufacturers will say their product will spring back into shape, while manufacturers using injection claim their product doesn’t dent in the first place.

“As an observer, I don’t see any wild advantage to any particular one,” Berg says. “The important thing for the user who’s buying 150,000 carts is a good warranty, good delivery, and good quality control.”

Berg says that injection molding has become the most popular, but a company’s staying power is a key component to getting an order.

“What good is a 10-year warranty if the company’s not going to be around in 10 years?” he points out.

But each town or area has its own needs and its own story.

Marin County, CA, for example, is one. With a population of almost 250,000 people scattered throughout several towns, it offers a lot of territory—828 square miles—to be covered by a small, private hauler like Marin Sanitary Services. It also has had to deal with the California environmental laws, most notably AB 939, which was voted into law in 1989.

Ron Piombo, 57, vice president of facilities for Marin Sanitary Service, talks about his company’s cart usage.

“Our history goes back to the early ’80s, when Joe Garbarino, the owner, and I talked about the need to have a new resource recovery facility, which is basically an indoor dump. Joe and I traveled around the United States to look at various facilities to see what equipment we needed or would be best,” Piombo says.

“And Schaefer recommended that we go to Germany to look at equipment there. Joe and I took a couple of trips to Germany to look at some facilities, and that’s when we learned we were going to have to build something tailored to our own needs.”

Piombo designed the facility in 1986, and it’s still in use. “We’ve updated the system as different technologies have come along,” he says.

But on one of the trips to Frankfurt, the Marin Sanitary team noticed how the Europeans were using carts.

“We were touring different facilities and saw carts in commercial use that were 15 years old and still in service. By contrast, the US had a stockpile of broken carts,” Piombo says.

It was also a time when the US was starting to have curbside recycling, and the carts were getting bigger and bigger.

“We felt there was a contradiction,” Piombo says. “We wanted a smaller size for easy handling. At that time, US carts were 64 gallons or 96 gallons. The Europeans had a single size at 32 gallons.

“It made sense to us for a family of four to reduce down to a 32-gallon cart with the start of recycling.”

So Marin Sanitary made the decision to try the carts with injection molding.

“That was in 1984. We bought 12,000 carts, and the vast majority of those are still in service,” he says. “Now we’ve got a European cart that was developed by Otto, a German manufacturer.”

For recycling, however, Marin has gone to a split-body truck.

“We don’t believe in commingling all the recyclables, because it contaminates the paper,” he says. “So we have a split cart for pickup. At the moment, we have seven split trucks—three Labries and four Bridgeports—and we’ve got four more on order.”

Marin Sanitary is also expanding its cart system. Last fall the company ordered 7,500 split carts, and it plans on ordering another 7,500.

“A lot of people in our position say we’re just haulers, but we don’t have that philosophy. We believe in recycling, and if you’re mixing, you’re contaminating. We want that paper to be recycled clean,” Piombo says.

His company uses injection carts, which he considers a safety device.

“We’ve had fires inside the carts, and the carts withstand the heat. They may melt down but won’t burst into flames,” Piombo says. The wheels are sturdy, he adds, and the lids seal very nicely and won’t fill up with rain.

“I’m a mechanic by trade,” Piombo says, “and I’ve been allowed to pick the equipment we use. I’ve had 10 different jobs in this company. Joe Garbarino and I worked together when I started here. Now he’s chairman of the board, and his daughter Patty Garbarino is president. It’s been fun. This is an industry that’s never going to go away.”

Marin Sanitation prides itself on its service, including educating customers and getting them to participate in the recycling program.

“When state officials came to visit us and saw that we were doing all this, they brought other companies here to train. And last year, the state board presented us with a recycling achievement award,” Piombo says.

So the little company showed it had the muscle to do things right.

On the other side of the Rocky Mountains, Lars Williams has a whole different show to run. Williams is the solid waste manager in Denver.

For Williams, who gives the stamp of approval for the purchase, a primary issue is the warranty.

“We always use the same warranty, a 10-year warranty. That’s a huge thing for us,” he says.

And he doesn’t have much of a failure rate. In fact, Williams says he’s had cross-link carts on the street for 19 years.

“Climate really doesn’t have anything to do with our order because of our UV rays here in Denver, where the sun shines often. The carts hold up better with a darker pigment,” he says.

He favors cross-link containers because of their longevity, but the linear carts are recyclable. “We went to Rehrig Pacific and got linear containers, which are under warranty. We just automated our recycling system and bought about 6,000 carts. Those are the Rehrig Pacific 65-gallon carts.”

In Denver’s collection, the city does one cart for trash and a cart for recycling, although recycling is a voluntary program because Colorado is not driven by the same environmental laws that govern California.

Down in New Orleans, it’s a whole different story, in part because of the destruction brought by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

Veronica White is the director of sanitation, a post she’s held for three and a half years. And she arrived at the job well-armed with a master’s degree in hazardous and toxic waste.

“This is the first time that the city of New Orleans has gone on the automated system,” White says. “These plans were on the board when I took over the job. At the time, the city was locked into a contract that wasn’t due to end until the end of 2006. So we just started this year.”

After a lot of research, White and the city ordered 100,000 carts from Cascade for the startup.

“We went with Cascade because of a mechanical ability,” White says. “They have carts that have a bar code embedded in them so we can track the carts. Having the bar codes gives us accountability control and inventory control. And of course there’s a warranty,” she says.

The embedded bar code also helps the city with billing, since residents pay for garbage disposal. This system is particularly useful in a city that has a lot of multiresident dwellings. The containers are assigned to specific addresses and apartment numbers, and when the trucks pick up the garbage carts, the bar code is automatically read. That’s where the billing and inventory control come into play. Every emptied cart is accounted for.

Before this system was initiated in January, New Orleans residents left their garbage at curbside in boxes or bags—plastic and paper—that created a mess when it rained or if a dog got into the rubbish. But no more.

“This system gives us checks and balances,” White says. “It not only tracks carts to make sure people are paying their fair share, but it also allows us to have a decent warranty on the cart. We also know what kind of damage occurs and if a cart is just handled carelessly.”

The injection carts used in New Orleans have a 96-gallon capacity, and going to an automated system for trash pickup required educating the residents to a whole new system.

In addition to being less messy, White says, the embedded codes have helped the city collect revenues and keep the trash bills accurate and up to date.

“We have twice-weekly pickups. And we also have a 32-gallon cart for the elderly and disabled,” White says.

Although the city hasn’t yet tackled recycling—there are quarterly drives—it’s definitely in White’s long-range plans.

“We’re looking at one-stop shopping for turning waste into energy, where everything has to be recycled. We hope that by the end of the next two years we will no longer be burying everything,” she says.

Over in Delray Beach, FL, Carlo Casagrande, owner of Sunbelt Hydraulics, a supplier for the refuse industry, talks about the Ameri-Kart carts.

“When I was in the private garbage-collection industry, until 1984 we chose Ameri-Kart,” Casagrande says. “It was one of the better carts in the industry, and we still have carts in use from 1985. Even though these carts get abused by drivers, 20 years later they’re still in use. These carts speak for themselves in terms of durability.”

The durability factor comes from the process of injection molding.

As a result of having more plastic, the carts are heavier (39-pound carts rather than the usual 35-pound carts).

“The carts also have lids that close automatically so that the garbage containers don’t fill up with water when it rains. If you don’t live here, you don’t really know what a downpour means in the rainy season. It affects everything,” he says. “Also, keeping the lid on keeps the smell from escaping.”

And in the subtropics, that’s a definite advantage.

The next stop is up the Atlantic Coast, all the way to Portland, ME. What’s unusual is this city of 65,000 doesn’t use carts—at least, not yet. Residents use bags.

It’s important to remember that the whole state of Maine only has a population of 1.2 million; in terms of density that comes to 41 people per square mile. A small population means a small tax base, so that cost has to be factored into everything. Often, the decision to buy or not to buy is a budget consideration.

Troy Moon, solid waste manager for the City of Portland, explains the current system of collecting garbage.

“People purchase official trash bags, and bags are cheaper than carts,” says Moon. “We service about 13,000 households, including apartment buildings, and people pay $1.50 per bag.”

Moon says that the town is on single-stream recycling, which spares drivers from sorting the recyclables. That’s done at a waste plant.

While Maine has extreme winter weather—ice, snow and rain—Portland is right on the coast. Moon says the main problem is the seagulls. “Our biggest issue is birds. Seagulls open up the bags and make a mess,” he notes.

Who knows? Maybe the gulls will drive the town to carts.

And back to the subject of carts.

“We have to talk about plastic processing when automation first started in Arizona, back in the ’60s and late ’70s,” says Al Spector, the West Coast manager of Schaefer. “The only process for making those 90-gallon or 100-gallon bins was rotational molding, known as ‘roto molding.’ And there was a limit on what that process could produce. The limitations of roto molding couldn’t supply what the industry needed.”

Schaefer is a German company, and almost all European containers are made by injection molding. This type can produce millions of carts a year, he says.

“When these bins were first made, there was a plastic that was used that had a chemical agent in the plastic—cross-linked polyethylene. It was the strongest thing you could ever use,” Spector says. “They were $85 or $90 apiece. But the problem was having to recycle the cross-linked carts. The polyethylene was totally nonrecyclable. It became a sore subject.”

Coming full circle to current issues, Skip Berg expands on some of the things that concern buyers today. Timing is key.

“A common issue for everybody is reliable delivery. You don’t want 2,000 carts costing $60 apiece sitting someplace. You want to get the carts at a specific time. If you get the carts before you have the trucks, it’s a headache,” says Berg.

And some of the vendors have avoided this problem by going to package bidding. This is where the buyer can get everything—trucks, carts and supplies—at one place. It’s one-stop shopping.

Cost is certainly another consideration.

“What drives cost is the price of resin and additives, such as supplemental things to inhibit UV deterioration,” says Berg. “Most carts range from $60 to $80. It’s a balancing act for the manufacturers. But most of the companies are busy these days.”

Outside of the pricing, time, and delivery, the issue of recycling will continue to influence the buying of carts. At one point, the cross-link carts were the darlings of the container world. Now recyclable carts are in favor.

And the subject of recycling can still produce arm wrestling. Those against it ask is it worth the cost? Those in favor tilt toward what they see as environmental issues.

A perfect example of this, Berg says, is the resistance to fully automated, single-stream recycling. Much of the resistance is tied to cost, such as initial outlay of capital for new carts, collection trucks, and educating residents.

And the commingling of paper, which can cause contamination, reduces income from potential sales of recycled fiber. And glass breakage raises processing costs.

Municipalities and haulers in favor of single stream herald the advantages. Reducing residents’ sorting means more recyclables are placed at the curb.

Single stream reduces costs because the single-compartment trucks are cheaper. And the collections can be automated. There are fewer injuries of sanitation workers.

And going to single stream means getting rid of bins and going to carts for collection.

So all these factors go into making what at the outset seems like a simple purchase. And after all the externals, there’s the feel-good factor. Like so many other consumer-purchased goods, a lot of the sales are made on relationships. The vendor’s relationship to the buyer is key in terms of doing long-term business, Berg says.

Ah, yes. Instead of location, location, location, it’s relationship, relationship, relationship!

DeWitt Smith is a journalist and features writer living in Ojai, CA.

MSW - September/October 2007