Transfer Station Price Increases effective July 1, 2019

Explanation of Price Increases effective July 1, 2019

Each year Town staff puts out a “Request for Proposals” (or “RFP”) in order to obtain the lowest pricing possible from our vendors at the Transfer Station.

As many of you may already know, the incinerator in Hartford (which is managed by “MIRA”), is the primary trash disposal outlet in our area, and directly impacts everyone’s ability, and cost, to dispose of municipal solid wastes in our region. As has been documented by several news articles, MIRA experienced severe equipment failures last fall which affected the ability to dispose of trash within our region. In response to these issues, MIRA announced significant price increases this past spring which directly affects our vendor’s costs and ultimately affects the Town of Windsor Transfer Station and our ability to maintain current disposal pricing levels.

Due to the significant rising costs of both trash and recyclables in our region, we must implement several modest price increases which are outlined below:

• Transportation fees to off-site disposal locations: In addition to paying for the weight of our wastes that are disposed off-site, vendors charge us trucking fees for them to empty our containers off-site and return them to be filled again. This affects all wastes that are hauled off-site. Results from our recent RFP resulted in 28% higher fees for the upcoming year. This increase of our costs is in addition to the disposal pricing as described below.

• “MSW”, “Municipal Solid Waste”, or normal “trash” – Results of our RFP for off-site disposal of MSW came in 15 % higher than our current expense. This affects both the cost of our annual Permits pricing, and the pricing of individual MSW transactions at the side window. In order to accommodate this increase, we must increase our pricing of these as follows

• Bulky Waste – Results of our RFP for off-site disposal of Bulky waste materials came in 11.7% higher than this year’s current expense. Because of this, we will be increasing the cost to dispose of these materials as follows:
  • C&D – Our fee for disposing of Construction & Demolition-type materials will be increased from $140 per ton to $155 per ton in FY20. This means that an average customer load which weighs 338 pounds will cost an additional $2.53 to dispose in FY20.
  • Yard Wastes – Our last price increase for these materials was more than 10 years ago. Our fee for disposing of Yard Wastes & Brush materials will be increased from $68 per ton to $80 per ton in FY20. This means that an average customer load which weighs 272 pounds will cost an additional $1.60 to dispose in FY20.
  • Sofas & Chairs – These items are charged by the individual “unit” because of their low weight-to-volume ratio. Said differently; it costs more to haul these items away than it does to dispose of them because of their large volumes and low relative-weights. The cost of these items are affected mainly by the increased hauling cost (+28%), in addition to increased disposal costs as well. The cost for disposal of both of these items will be increased by $5 (per item) in FY20 to account for our increase in costs.

New Recycling Fees:

In January of 2018, China launched an initiative called “National Sword”, the most severe step in China’s goal of building a metaphorical “green fence”, which is intended to block imports of illegal and low-quality wastes and recyclables into China. These regulations imposed virtually unreachable restrictions for contaminants in recyclables that have had a severe impact on global recycling markets. Excessive amounts of recycled materials continue to be stockpiled in the US and other countries world-wide. This glut of recyclables has created an inversion in the value of these materials; materials that once had a marketable economic value now come with a new significant expense to manage.

These new recyclable fees are being instituted to cover our increased Transfer Station expenses while still making provisions for residents who may periodically have larger quantities of recyclables from time to time.

Every resident of Windsor currently enjoys the ability to recycle curbside as part of the “Big Blue” program that was rolled out town-wide back in 2014.

These new fees may also indirectly encourage residents to participate more in the “Big Blue” program as well.

As budgeted, effective July 1^st, we will begin charging $5 per carload, and $10 per pickup truck for single-stream recyclables that are delivered to the Transfer Station.

The following table summarizes all of these fee changes for FY2020: