City officials will address trash services in Columbia

Columbia city leaders will give residents a chance to talk about trash.

The city wants your opinion on how to improve solid waste pickup.

The discussion will include increasing recycling and better ways to bill for trash collection among other issues.

The first forum is in Ward 2 in the northeast side of the city.

Throughout the next couple of months, city officials will be listing to residents in all of the wards to get an idea of what they want to see in the future for trash collection services.

Those ideas and opinions will then be passed on to the city council.

“How can we provide a community an acceptable level of service? How can we do so economically, to where people aren’t paying high rates for their refuse and recycling collection, but at the same time what kind of system do our customers want to see,” asked Steve Sapp with Columbia Public Works.

Officials said one topic discussed will be city workers’ job satisfaction and safety.

The turnover rate for trash collectors sits at about 70% and currently the city needs to fill 4 positions.

The second major topic is recycling.

“We need to look at ways that we can divert more materials away from our landfill because it’s expensive to operate and in a sense a waste of land,” said Sapp.

Officials said Columbia’s residential recycling is well below the national average.

A 10 year average indicates that just about 17% of residents recycle, compared to a national average of 34%.

Officials said they’ll also discuss cost of garbage services.

One idea is called “pay as you throw.”

“We’re trying to find an equitable way for people that are small volume generators paying less. People that are medium volume generators are paying a little bit more, and large volume pay a higher rate,” said Sapp.

Officials said the “pay as you throw” idea and a lot of other topics regarding trash service will be discussed at these forums.