If you saw the article earlier this month in the Seattle Times, Seattle Public Utilities is starting a pilot program in July to only pick up garbage every other week rather than each week. It would follow that the cost should go down 50% too, right? Maybe not.
Following an inquiry by a neighbor, they received this reply from the city:
Thank you for contacting us regarding our planned project to test every other week garbage pickup later this year in a few neighborhoods. If the City decided to implement this Citywide, we would not be able to reduce customer bills by half, unfortunately. The City would save about 30% of the garbage collection costs, or $6 million per year, but that represents a small share of total costs covered by customer garbage bills. Other costs include payments for disposal, recycling, clean city efforts, billing, customers service and other system costs. The savings with these costs included would be approximately 10%. We hope to get more feedback from customers through our test project regarding these limited bill savings and other potential challenges. Any consideration for citywide change is a couple years away.
Thank you again for contacting us with your question.
Hans Van Dusen
Solid Waste Contracts Manager
206.684.4657
