I’m writing with my perspective only, as one of seven Hartford board members. I too will lose a valuable service in about six weeks’ time: that of curbside recycling. I was one of three members who didn’t vote to end it. I voted “abstain” because that was closest to my personal beliefs. Judging by the letters we’ve received, recycling is clearly one of the most popular services we provide. I voted “abstain” because I didn’t think we should lock ourselves into shovelling money at Casella for the next five years… but I also didn’t think we should cancel this town service without a plan in place to replace the loss.

The night the board voted to discontinue curbside pickup was the third meeting in which we had been told of the final-offer prices from Casella, which fellow board member Erik Krauss has helpfully outlined on this listserv. At each of the three meetings that described the pricing, I raised the point that, with what we’d end up paying each year to Casella, we could buy a new recycling truck outright. It didn’t seem fiscally responsible to fund a huge corporation when we could avoid paying those margins. (I also don’t believe that having more than four times the police officers per capita that other nearby towns have is fiscally responsible, but I digress.)

According to data presented in a board meeting, Hartford’s curbside service occupied one of Casella’s trucks one week out of every two. (Presumably it would collect another town’s recycling the week it didn’t do ours.) If another town also chucked half a million at Casella annually, then the company was raising $1M/year from a truck that cost half a million. Thus it could be said that we were funding a new Casella truck every six months. A truck that would last 15 years. This is the promise of cutting out the middleman: we don’t send those profits away. After perhaps 2 or 2.5 years, given the cost of staffing and new compatible bins, we could have a truck that would last us another 13 years. The plastic bins would last the lifetime of a second truck. I’d rather invest in ourselves than in the shareholders of a billion-dollar corporation. Cities all over the country collect recycling. And we gave small haulers every opportunity to chime in, “tailoring” to them our request for proposals. No one bit. Which brings us to today.

At tonight’s board meeting (May 13), we will discuss future possibilities of town-led recycling. I believe we and our neighbors deserve a clear look at what it would cost Hartford to run our own curbside service. This would be the true cost of providing service, without obscene profit margins. This information can likely be compiled within a couple months, and then we’d all have some time to ponder. Perhaps we implement something for the next fiscal year; perhaps using “local option tax” funds. Or maybe we take out a bond, which we’ve been told we have plenty of capacity to do, at excellent rates. But we’ll never know what it really costs unless the board asks the town manager (who’d likely get help from town staff) to develop a plan and compile those costs. That’s what the board could do tonight. The discussion is tentatively scheduled for 8:05pm. I hope you’ll join, whether in person or over Zoom.

One could think of the temporary loss of curbside recycling as an opportunity. A wake-up call. If we want to resist the corporate price-gouging so prevalent in western society these days, then we need to put our money where our mouth is, and crunch some numbers.